By Dave Andrusko

Almost as if on cue, the day of and the day after NRLC's State Legislative Strategy Conference two articles ran --one an editorial, the other a news story--illustrating how much the legislative landscape has changed, courtesy of massive pro-life gains in the November 2 elections.

The first is a Tuesday editorial in a New Hampshire newspaper, the Concord Monitor, bashing Bill O'Brien, the newly elected Speaker of the New Hampshire House, for talking about the need for a parental notification law in the Granite State.

According to the editorial, O'Brien said of such a law, "That's not distracting [from focusing on fiscal matters]. That's not going to take much time at all. It's an issue where there's such a commonsense, noncontroversial approach to what the solution is."

The editorial then went ballistic. On the one hand, parental notification laws are harmful and ignore the child's "rights." On the other hand, such laws aren't needed because "most girls will, of course, turn to their parents in such a crisis." In addition, abortion clinics can be counted on to "strive to make sure their young patients have a mature adult in their lives to help them through a difficult decision." (Of course, how could we ever doubt PPFA's altruistic motives.)

NRLC Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch figuratively threw up her hands after reading the editorial. "If most girls are telling their parents, what's the big objection to having the law on the books?" It 's because, Balch explained, "the editorial paints parents as their child's enemy from whom the girl must be protected."

"What these editorial writers miss is that these laws are designed to help young girls who are not mature enough to understand the consequences of an abortion to themselves or their babies." Far from being enemies, parents "are there to protect their child, which they can't do if they are kept in the dark."

If the minor really feels she cannot tell her parents, all parental involvement laws provide the option of going to a judge.

In the Iowa Register today there appears a story headlined, "Iowa faces new abortion battle," written by Jason Clayworth. Prompted by signs that abortionist LeRoy Carhart will find a site to begin performing abortions late in pregnancy in Iowa, the story quotes legislators who are looking to close loopholes in the law that Carhart might exploit.

Balch noted how Iowa is becoming a kind of Ground Zero on abortion. First, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland is already using a teleconferencing system ("Web-cam abortions") that allows the abortionist to "counsel" a woman without actually being in the room and then activating a mechanism which opens a drawer filled with abortifacients. (See "Inside the NRLC State Legislative Strategy Conference.")

Second, Balch said, there is the problem of Carhart, whose move into the Maryland suburbs just outside Washington, D.C. already is prompting concern and dismay.

"The fight has come to Iowa," Balch said, "and I know the pro-life people of Iowa understand that it is incumbent upon them to repel these threats to unborn babies and their mothers."