Commencement Speech
by Renata V. Chandler
Los Gatos High School Class Valedictorian
'Thank you, Ms. Canrinus, faculty, staff, and graduates. Most valedictory speeches consist of platitudes concerning the bright future we have ahead, the daring challenges we'll face, and the solemn responsibility we have to make the world a better place.
'I stand here today and ask instead that we look back, to thank those in the past who have struggled to do the same. For we are indeed in a world that is a better place. I say that neither with youthful myopia nor comfortable ignorance. I speak as one who knows.
'Though we can all admit knowledge of this fact, I am the only one in my graduating class who can say this from a par-ticular point of view. Next year there will be three. The year after that, a dozen or more. I would not be here, alive and filled with joy at our future, were it not for eyes that looked at the world and saw the need for change.
'One person. What a staggering difference one person, one life, can make. One woman decided that death was intoler-able. She saved one life. One tiny, insignificant, nearly invis-ible life. And through that action millions came to be saved. Saved without the oppression of any other human being.
'As the first of my kind, I've received the lion's share of pub-lic scrutiny. Because of this, though, I cultivated an interest in my kindred spirits. I have sought them out, observed them, and I'm pleased to report that they are coming along nicely. I haven't found out about them all, of course, not even a small fraction. But thanks to the love of life and the devotion to prin-ciples of a significant few of the previous two generations, the human race has welcomed over twenty-two million extra members to its ranks.
'Twenty-two million is not a great percentage of the eight billion alive today. Every single life, though, matters. I would not be here to say that if one of our elders had not thought so. And every single person can make a difference.
'We entered the third millennium in a headlong rush to cor-rect the problems of the last twenty centuries. Some said that overpopulation was the cause of all our miseries and sought to suppress reproductive choice. But the wise ones realized that the demon was not a glut of humanity but a dearth of respect for the rights of its members. Who were the wise ones? In retrospect, we can see that they weren't the presidents and kings, the powerful and the established. The wise ones were the mothers who conceived us and gave birth to us or who gave us to another rather than kill us. They were the mothers who received us in our defenseless condition. They were the fathers who loved and protected us. And they were the doc-tors, teachers, relatives, and friends who saw us not as oddi-ties but as mere humans with all the rights and responsibili-ties such an honor bestows.
'Let us give thanks, then, to those who brought all of us to this point today. To those who gave us birth, no matter how. To those who raised us, taught us, instilled in us the values we hold. And as we go forward into the world they made, let us honor them in the finest way we can: by never slipping back from the frontiers they opened; by understanding the nature of the rights and laws they discovered; and by reaching ever farther beyond their grasp to touch new truths, new worlds, and new freedoms.
'To all of you through the centuries and eons who lived, labored, struggled, and died to bring us to this point, to deliver us to the threshold of the universe, we take our first step into a world bigger than Earth, and say thank you, thank you, and thank you.'
THE END The Orange County Register Sunday, October 29, 1989
COMMENTARY/EDITORIALS
A Novel of Ideas That's a
Page-Turner
By Alan W. Bock
With the decision by the US Supreme Court to allow the states more latitude in regulating abortion, the issue has become, if anything, more contentious and more difficult to resolve in a way that won't leave one side or the other feeling bitter. As so often happens when questions of personal rights are handled in the political arena, we see increasing polarization, accom-panied by a reluctance to concede that the other side has any-thing at all valid to say.
On the pro-choice side, for example, I've yet to see much evidence of concern that millions of babies-or at least poten-tial babies-are being killed. Yet every woman I know who has wrestled with the question of whether to have an abortion has been personally troubled by just that issue, whatever decision she ultimately made. On the pro-life side, it's difficult to detect much sympathy for women wrestling with this choice. There are honorable exceptions, of course, and an increasing willingness to pro-mote more adoption with deeds as well as words, but many anti- abortion activists seem content to moralize more than sympathize. I suspect that such polarization is always likely in the politi-cal arena. When ultimate questions, those in which compro-mise is very difficult or out of the question, are decided by political means, you usually end up with a winner and a loser. Both sides know this at some level, and tend to become bitter with one another unwilling to concede ally benefit of doubt or moral value to the contentions of the other side. But what if there were a way for babies (or fetuses) to be saved after abortion, implanted in the wombs of willing moth-ers who want babies but are unable to have them, brought to term, born, and raised? Would that change anything, or would the two sides remain polarized?
