The View from "The Big House"

The View from “The Big House”
A Reflection on the Fortieth Anniversary of Roe v Wade

Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, is less than a 30-minute drive south from our house, strange and sometimes perilous territory for a fan of Buckeye football and Hoosier basketball to call home.  The University of Michigan football team plays their home games just down the road in the spacious confines of Michigan Stadium, or as it is known in these parts, “The Big House.”  The stadium is, in fact, one BIG house.

The official seating capacity for “The Big House” is 109,901.  The seats are actually very rarely used since attendees typically stand the whole time they are there.  September 10, 2011, however, 114,804 eyewitnesses watched the hometown Wolverines defeat the Notre Dame Irish by a score of 35-31.  That represents the single-game attendance record for NCAA football.  

Just as impressive as that single-game feat, every home game since a contest with Purdue on November 8, 1975, has hosted at least 100,000 fans.  That’s more than 200 games.  That’s 20,000,000 spectators. 

Think about this a moment.  If I did my math correctly (multiplying by two and adding two zeroes), more than 20 million people since 1975 have packed into “The Big House.”  Imagine 200 stadiums across the nation being similarly crammed with 100,000 people each.  Now double that, and we have an astounding 40 million people.  

That is still 15 million people shy of the number of citizens the United States has lost since 1972 to abortion. 

Fifty-five million people since 1972 have gone missing, missing from our schools, from our rosters, from our neighborhoods, from our workplaces, missing from our churches and synagogues, missing from our lives.  The oldest of them would be 41 years old today, and the youngest … well,  some of those 41-year-olds could be raising the youngest of these.      

How many teachers and mentors?  How many policemen and firemen?  How many doctors and nurses?  How many soldiers and civic leaders?  How many athletes and coaches?  How many discoverers and pioneers?  How many artists and craftsmen?  How many church members, ministers and missionaries?  How many benefactors and taxpayers? 

How many more will we lose?  Recent trends suggest more than 800,000 babies will be lost this year… no, not lost but … well, what is the best word?  Discarded?  Sacrificed?  Murdered?  More people than will go to the seven home games at “The Big House” in 2013 will be deprived of the opportunity even to cheer on a favorite team on TV.  

Will we miss them?