My mother died last year. When my wife and my daughter leaned over for her quiet last frail embrace and a few final words, she gave them a message of encouragement and love. To me, she expressed a sense of regret: "I wasn't always there for you," she whispered.

When I was one year old, she decided to place me in a foster home. Nine years later, when she remarried, I decided to stay with the foster parents I'd come to think of as my parents, too. She had two subsequent failed and deeply mourned pregnancies, but at last, she had two healthy births.

On the 35^th anniversary of Roe v Wade, I'm thinking of the pain she went through with the failed pregnancies and her pain at the end of her life. I'm also reminded of a story broadcast on National Public Radio last year just before her death.

Victims of Chinese government officials in Quangxi Province described their forced abortions to NPR reporter Louisa Lim. The women told of involuntary injections and officials without the simple decency to provide follow-up medical care. Denying the accusations, local officials said: "We really love and care for women here."

According to Lim, "investigators" were hurriedly cleaning up the hospital beds and dispersing the young victims to rural and remote parts of the province.

I am also thinking of last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that denies a few desperate women access to what may be an ugly and troubling but would have been safe and legal late-term abortion. The Court has brought the government and the opposition to abortion together in an effort which: " . . . furthers the legitimate interest of the government in protecting the life of the fetus that may become a child."

Although one government claims to respect life and the other government acts to extinguish it, I have a sickening sense that these actions are not related by love and care for women. Instead, they are connected by a conviction that women must be prohibited from making their own decisions about pregnancy and reproduction. As justification, the Court's majority opinion says: "While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptional to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. . . . Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow."

Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority of the court, admits using an unsupported belief that many women later regret having had abortions to justify a prohibition. The chilling common thread is an enforceable faith that the government's end justifies the brutal means they use to achieve it.

How is a preventable maternal death less repugnant than a late-term abortion?

There are parallel moral, ethical and spiritual issues at the end and at the beginning of life. Thankfully, despite its love and care for women, the administration did not interfere with my mother's final days. On the 35^th anniversary of Roe v Wade and in her memory, I am compelled to say that if we love and care for women, we will stand together to respect and guarantee the human rights of each one.

My mother was entitled to her regrets, but when she told me she wasn't always there for me, she was wrong. She did the right thing for the right reasons.