The Potomac Highlands Dispatch - the online newspaper

Taylor: Abortion is 'grave travesty to our nation'
Miltenberger: 'We should have hundreds of people here'

By The Potomac Highlands Dispatch
CUMBERLAND, Jan. 23 -- Little more than a dozen area residents braved the 20-degree temperature Sunday afternoon to participate in a brief ceremony to honor the Memorial for the Unborn.

The monument was erected in 2004 on the grounds of Davis United Methodist Church on Uhl Highway south of Cumberland. At the time, it was meant to remember each of the 42 million children aborted in the United Since since 1973, when the landmark Roe v. Wade was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That number is now well over 52 million, event organizers from the Cumberland Historic Cemetery Organization said. Several members of that group also participate in activities with Allegany County Right to Life and the Allegany County Conservative TEA Party Caucus. All three groups were represented on Sunday at Davis United Methodist Church.

Edward W. Taylor Jr., CHCO president, said many of those aborted children "were murdered by and with your tax money that you pay to the federal government and the state of Maryland. It is the result of deeds of liberal legislators over the years."

The Memorial for the Unborn, Taylor said, "acts as a gravestone" for them all.

The annual ceremony fell on the 38th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that guaranteed a woman's right to choose.

Attendance could be described, at best, as dismal. Event co-organizer Mary Miltenberger said "we should have hundreds of people here."

Taylor made a point to mention there were no membesr of the clergy at the brief ceremony.

An avid historian, Taylor asked those in attendance Sunday to consider: Adolt Hiter and the Third Reich were responsible for the deaths of more than six million Jewish people. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin killed over 20 million. The toll of aborted children in the U.S. is more than 2.5 times that number, Taylor noted.

"We need to stop and think about this," Taylor said. "This is truly the American holocaust. We pray for the hearts and minds of the people of our nation, that they wake up and see the horrors of this event."