An Insider's View -- Part Two

As mentioned in Part One, the New York Times does not lack for abortion coverage. I had intended to talk about only one more story in Part Two, but during a quick look on the Times' webpage  I saw a bunch of others I'd missed. I will briefly refer to two other stories.

There is a story today about Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy inheriting the "centralist" mantle from Justice Sandra O'Conner. With respect to our issue, Adam Cohen writes, "Although both justices have supported Roe, he has voted to uphold greater restrictions on abortion rights."

This is an allusion to Kennedy's vote to uphold Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortion. However, Kennedy firmly backs Roe v. Wade.

The core of the article is that Kennedy "will become even harder to pigeonhole in his new role," not just because of the new power he will wield, but because he likes to be liked and because his views "are evolving." While there may be something just a touch "condescending" about Kennedy's reputation for being someone "who cares what other people think," Cohen says, "there is something refreshing about a justice who genuinely seems to have an open mind."

For Cohen it's good that Kennedy "did not have Judge Bork's far-right credentials." (Judge Robert Bork, a distinguished jurist, was President Reagan's first choice to replace Lewis Powell, Jr. Bork's nomination was demagogued to death by Senator Ted Kennedy.) Better yet, "Justice Kennedy has often broken with conservative dogma."

How this will all play out, no one can tell yet. "But it is likely that rather than pleasing any ideology or interest group, the court will be guided by one man's sometimes idiosyncratic, but evidently quite sincere, attempt to reach the right result." Right, as defined, of course, by the New York Times.

The Times, for the umpteen time, editorialized for more federal money for "therapeutic cloning," the classic misnomer. A clone is a clone is a clone. The only difference is whether the cloned child is dissected for spare parts or carried to term.

The interesting part of the March 31 editorial is that the lead is about how another state will fund "embryonic stem cell" research. Rather than lessening the need for opening the federal spigot, for the Times this is all the more reason to pony up your federal tax dollars and mine for this reprehensible and unnecessary research.

But the most fascinating piece appears in today's Times. Written by Neela Banerjee, it's headlined, "The Abortion-Rights Side Invokes God, Too." The story is instructive in a lot of ways.

Most Times readers probably don't know that The Interfaith Prayer Breakfast "has been part of Planned Parenthood's annual convention for four years," or that "Most ministers and rabbis at the breakfast have known the group far longer."

(PPFA has been much more aggressive in recent years in presenting a religious gloss to its argument for obliterating millions of unborn children. We'll be reviewing a book on that topic. Sacred Work, Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances," in the May or June issue of NRL News.)

It won't surprise many older readers of the Times that members of a number of "mainline" religious organizations were up to their eyeballs in promoting abortion in the 1960s. That included lobbying for repeal of protective abortion statutes and offering advice on where to go to obtain abortions.

The story was replete with quotes that, at best, are incongruous to pro-life ears. Others will make you…. well, you can image.

"We are here this morning because, through our collective efforts, we are agents in bringing our fragile world ever closer to the promise of redemption," Rabbi Dennis S. Ross, director of Concerned Clergy for Choice, told the audience. "As clergy from an array of denominations, we say yes to the call before us. Please join me in prayer: We praise you, God, ruler of time and space, for challenging us to bring healing and comfort to your world."

Healing and comfort? An odd prayer to utter at the convention of the largest abortion provider in the United States.

What I gather was the main speech delivered by the Rev. W. Stewart MacColl was fascinating. The Rev. MacColl leads a Presbyterian church in Houston.

In his speech, he condemned protestors yet "took refreshments to the protesters out of respect for their understanding of faith." The audience "murmered its assent" when the Rev. MacColl quoted the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: "Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good." (The Rev. MacColl referred to one woman protestor in particular.)

My first response was, of course, he can see the speck in the eye of pro-lifers but not the log in his own. But to his great credit, the Rev. MacColl said the following.

"The trouble is, I find myself reflected in that woman," according to  Banerjee. "Because I can get trapped in self-righteousness and paint those who oppose me in dark colors they do not deserve. Is that, at times, true of you, as well?"

This time, Banerjee wrote, "people were silent."

This gentleness was much too much for some pro-abortion ministers, who "could barely contain their outrage." To them, I suspect, the Rev. MacColl had missed the whole point. Choosing abortion is an act that God not only signs off on, but is integral to women's growth--and maybe His too!

For example, "The more we are able to cultivate the capacity in every person -- women and men -- to make informed ethical judgments both in ourselves and our society, the more we are coming into relationship with the transcendent, with God," said the Rev. Susan Thistlethwaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary.

Besides, there's the politics. "Human existence as a materialistic quest for power and dominance, a crass manipulation of fear and intolerance for political gain, drives us apart both from one another and from God," she said. "For what does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?"

Let's be clear. You and I and those officials who advance the cause of life are at risk of losing our souls. Why? Because we try to save the lives of 1.3 million unborn babies each year for the basest of reasons: because we are intolerant manipulators of "fear and intolerance for political gain." If that weren't bad enough, we divide people and separate them and us from God.

What a bizarre reading of the motivation of people, who volunteer countless hours for no reward other than the hope that their efforts are leading to a reconciliation between America and her unborn children. Is the Rev. Thistlethwaite  genuinely incapable of seeing that we reject the violence and barbarism that is abortion because annihilating helpless unborn children is unjust, unrighteous, and, in a fundamental sense, un-American?

Moreover, to tell us that an "ethical judgment" (in this case to batter, crush, and disarticulate unborn children) is "informed" does not end the debate. It begins it.

Assurances that "cultivating" such "a capacity" enhances our "relationship with the transcendent, with God" does not sheathe that goofy conclusion from criticism. It demands that its assumptions be brought out into the open for debate and discussion.

My guess is not a lot of people, other than those attending the conference at the Washington Hilton last Friday, would buy her conclusions. They shortchange both us as responsible moral agents, and God, whose demand for justice for the weakest among us is common to the holy scriptures of all the great religions.

You just never know what is going to come out of the mouth of a pro-abortionist.

Please send your comments to Dave Andrusko at dandrusko@nrlc.org.