THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, September 17, 1994           TAG: 9409160010
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   44 lines

WHY IS AMERICA SO MURDEROUS?

Kawana Ashley shot her unborn baby with a 22-caliber pistol. She couldn't afford the $1,800 charged by the Florida abortion clinic. Ms. Ashley is 19 years old, unmarried, unemployed and has a 3-year-old son she turned over to her grandmother.

Don't you wish it weren't true? I wish these other things weren't true.

An 11-year-old child is charged with murder. The leading cause of death for young black men is murder.

Unwed birth rates in some poor communities are as high as 80 percent. Public assistance regulations have punished needy families with fathers for multiple generations. Dan Quayle was ridiculed for his stand against creating an unwed mother role-model in fictional Murphy Brown.

The U.S. surgeon general wants to teach our children what to do in the back seat of a car instead of what not to do. It is against the law to debate religion-based morality in the public schools or even recite the Pledge of Allegiance daily.

In April 1992, Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly of Washington, D.C., said we are in a ``War of Values.''

President Clinton told church leaders that 40 percent of American children are born to mothers who have never been married. Twenty seven of every 100 pregnant mothers in America abort their babies. The president said ``that's just too many.''

Why do we Americans have too many abortions, too many unwed mothers and too many murderous children? Because we Americans wish that abortion weren't the killing of an innocent life. We Americans wish that sex outside marriage weren't bad for society. We Americans wish that recreational drug use weren't destructive. We Americans wish it weren't people but guns that cause people to kill. We Americans wish that religion weren't necessary for morality. We Americans wish that these truths weren't true.

Wishing won't make it so.

WILLIAM D. ROBERTSON

Virginia Beach, Sept. 10, 1994 by CNB