Last week the American Life League ran an ad in the Washington Times. At the top of the ad, "President Bush: Protect Social Security." Beneath that title an elderly man in a rocking chair holds a young child. The ad states that the current problems with social security would not exist if over fifty million babies had become part of society - instead each one was aborted.

In a hospital the proof of life, or more correctly the proof of death, revolves around the existence of a heartbeat and brainwaves. In times of less medical advancement the presence of life was determined by a pulse and a breath. That's how we determine when life has left this mortal coil, when all that is left is an earthly shell.

But when does life start? When are we given the breath of life? When does man become a living soul? At conception? At the first discernible heartbeat? At a baby's first breath? There is no machine - no instrument - that can divine the presence of the human spirit. So for now let us forget the question of 'when'.

Would social security be more viable if those fifty million babies had lived? It would seem logical because in that group is a potential work force. A potential of tens of millions of workers that will never be. For the past few decades we have debated whether or not those potential fifty million lives were actual lives at that point when their potential was removed. Yet no one argues that the potential - up to the time it was forcibly removed - didn't exist.

No one argues that Sarah Smith had any more potential than her twin brother. Both had the potential to be born, to go to school, to live a life. If the natural course of things was not interrupted, that's probably what would have happened. Except one day in November, Sarah's brother Andrew was aborted. He was never born, never went to school, never lived a life, but she did.

Heidi Huffman didn't have more potential life than others the day her mother went to have an abortion. The abortionist just missed. Gianna Jessen wasn't different from any other aborted baby the day her mother when to the clinic. She just survived.

We can argue over what human life exists and when it exists, but it cannot be denied that each conception contains the same potential. As a society we are killing our future, because we have let individuals remove the potential of another.

We're concerned with potential in other areas. How many potential George Washington Carvers will never be because of school violence? How many Einsteins have been lost to drug use? How many Condoleezza Rices had their potential removed by racism?

We fight passionately against these things because when a life is lost more than just a mass of living cells dies. When a human life is extinguished, so is influence and the potential change that could have been made on this world. But has anything had greater effect on the potential future of this world than abortion?

Where's the Louis Pasture of the 21st century? Could he have been aborted last week? Who's the Thomas Edison of the next 50 years? Maybe he was aborted a few months ago. The next Jefferson and Lincoln might have been aborted just last year.

What about the group that holds abortion higher then their own right to life? Liberals complain about a lack of real leaders. Where's the candidate that could have beaten President Bush? Maybe he was aborted. Where's the liberal who could dethrone Rush? Maybe she was aborted. Where are the next generation of liberal leaders? Maybe they were aborted.

Obviously these possibilities cannot be proven, and that is my point. We'll never know what potential was lost. We'll never know who we've killed. We'll never know what could have been. We are killing our future.

If a student was denied the chance to fulfill his full potential in science, or law, or athletics, there would be cries of outrage. The ACLU would sue for something, and the media would question how anything like that could happen in America. Yet abortion takes potential that exists - a potential life, yes a potential failure, but at the same time a potential success - and puts it in the hands of another. Abortion allows someone else to chose whether that potential will ever be realized. Where's the outrage?

In the end I have to come down firmly on the side of choice. I think every kid deserves a chance at life. I think every kid should be able to chose a life. Becoming a doctor, teaching a class, working at a bank, building houses, writing software, publishing newspapers. I think every kid should have the chance to choose. Because one day, when some young man decides to become the next Hitler, there should be others becoming the next Churchill and Roosevelt.

Unless they were aborted.