Roe vs. Wade was based on lies. Orchestrated by lawyers and bankrolled by Hugh Hefner, they used Norma McCorvey (as &#8220RoeC) 7 who was not even considering abortion 7 as the flash point. Norma McCormick now fights to have it overturned.

Rampant abortion 7 one in about three pregnancies 7 is the end result of a society that has used, abused and deceived our young women for money, power and lust.

Does any one really think that the likes of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton really care about women when they talk about a woman/s right to choose?

To accept abortion, a young girl who loves babies and kittens by nature must be hardened and seduced by a society which has made her sexuality an advertising gimmick. This same society gives an Academy Award to a movie about a girl who made it her goal to have equal rights in a boxing ring to be as pummeled and brain damaged as the men.

The entertainment world seldom gets it right. If &#8220Leave it to BeaverC was silly, with mom wearing pearls while vacuuming, and with &#8220LucyC spending her entire days playing tricks on Ricky, today/s real womanhood is disdained by our media. Chastity and pregnancy are jokes in the parade of inane sit-coms. Our movies and plays vie for the most vulgarity, and language among young women emulates sailors in a barroom.

Before the sexual revolution, most women knew they didn/t have to become like men to feel important. We knew our gifts as women were awesome. We knew we could do just about anything men could if we wanted to. But we didn/t want to and didn/t need to. We saw the dignity and joy of faithful married love and precious gift of childbearing.

If we didn/t enjoy a great childhood, we wanted to create our own family that would be that rock for our own children to be secure.

Too many of today/s young women have been hoodwinked by our culture, leaving a lot of broken-hearted, unhappy singles. Women who realized after they broke the glass ceiling that they could never go back and use their awesome powers built into them.

Confused by the semantics of women/s rights, they gave away their bodies to the men who used them. They thwarted the gift of fertility, or disposed of their offspring before birth. Later they found they had diseases that couldn/t be cured, infertility that couldn/t be fixed and a hole in their hearts for their lost children.

Are young men really any better off? Jaded by endless sexual encounters that meant nothing, many young men are left empty and frustrated. Saturated by the over-indulgence of the icing on the cake, they seek more and more sugar, while never tasting the cake.

All of us, men and women alike, want to know real love. Lust is a poor substitute. Using others is the opposite of loving them.

I am happy that women now have access to opportunities that they couldn/t dream of before. I enjoyed picking up my education while raising my family to graduate from UCLA at the age of 50, the only woman college graduate in my birth family. I chose education as a hobby as other women chose gardening, and enjoyed the feeling of working as a professional while a teacher in the L.A. school system.

However, from the time I had twin sisters when I was 5, I thought that babies were the greatest miracles one could have. I was glad to be a girl and still think that my own children were my greatest gifts.

No, it/s not all a bed of roses, and each child takes a chunk of your life in work and time. And yes, there are many wonderful careers out there for the choosing. But is there any job more challenging or any finer contribution than raising happy, well-adjusted human beings?

And I discovered later that second only to the thrill of holding one/s own newborn is the soft squeeze of a grandchild/s hug.

Barbara Murphy lives in Santa Maria.

January 22, 2006