Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in the case of abortionist George Tiller. In a promotion letter dated April 19, 1991, he announced the formation of a Fetal Indications Termination of Pregnancy (FITOP) program utilizing both medicine and religion to assist patients with the trauma of late-term abortions.

In this program each patient and her husband/spousal alternative take part in an ultrasound study of the fetus as well as a private consultation. They are then invited to participate in a Fetal Indications Support and Healing Group with the other FITOP patients. In addition they are encouraged to be involved in the Fetal Indications Identification and Separation Encounter.

"In this encounter," writes Tiller, "they are introduced to the normal features of their baby as well as the anomalies. Patients are encouraged to speak directly to the baby if they wish, and finally, to say `goodbye'...The patient may elect to receive fetal ashes."

A minister friend of Tiller's added the dimension of religion. In an interview in the Wichita Eagle Beacon he said Tiller calls him occasionally to visit with women who are having late-term abortions. "He asked me to do that because the people were having a struggle with this decision," he said. "In the cases in which I have been involved, the fetuses were severely deformed. We even had a baptism service for the aborted fetuses." For years abortion advocates denied the baby's existence and justified abortion as the termination of a pregnancy, nothing more.

Now they readily acknowledge that the baby in the womb is a living human being, but they deny her the right to live, especially if she is not perfectly healthy.

In a sacrilege that portends an ominous future, clergy now use a religious rite to make the unacceptable not only permissible, but seem blessed.

When abortion is viewed in this historical context we can only conclude that if we continue to permit abortion on demand, in spite of the fact we know the unborn are alive, we are jeopardizing our entire way of life.

Abortion does not exist in a historical vacuum. Rather, it is a part of a moral malaise which threatens our inherent value of human life and is potentially shattering to the foundations of Western civilization.

Once we deprive even a single person (or a select group like children in the womb) of the inalienable right to life, we have taken the "fatal first step" toward death on demand.

If citizens of conscience do not use their considerable power and influence to end legalized abortion, America will suffer the inevitable consequences including forced abortions to limit family size, infanticide for defective infants, and mandatory euthanasia. To ignore this reality is denial of the most dangerous kind.