"A Window Into His Soul"

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My kids are big fans of the "X-men" movies. Eventually, out of curiosity, I actually watched the middle film of the trilogy. Aptly titled "X2," near the end one of the characters uses her powers to save the rest of her friends by erecting a telekinetic wall to stop a massive rush of water let loose when a dam breaks.

No sooner are they safe than she is enveloped by the flood.

The character is a self-sacrificing heroine in this context.

The image of holding back an irresistible tide came to my mind this morning as I read a front-page story in the Washington Times and an op-ed by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post. Only this time the irresistible flood is not water, but the truth, and the person attempting to hold it back is not doing so out of nobility but out of political expediency.

I am referring to pro-abortion times two Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.). By deftly employing the language of reconciliation and "seeing both sides," he has managed to keep his extremist, out-of-the-mainstream position on abortion largely under wraps.

We've talked about Sen. Obama on a number of occasions, both in TN&V and in National Right to Life News. We do so again in the April issue. NRL News and others have attempted to expose his militant pro-abortion position, but Obama--the front-runner for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination--has escaped largely unscathed.

However, my guess is that in a few months we will look back and see that this free-ride began to end with his astonishingly insensitive and (by his standards) stunningly revealing comments about unplanned pregnancies. As we discussed yesterday, last Saturday Obama laid it all on the line to a town hall meeting in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

"When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include -- which should include abstinence education and teaching the children -- teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include -- it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby. I don't want them punished with an STD at the age of 16. You know, so it doesn't make sense to not give them information."

As Gerson writes, "…Obama has oddly claimed that he would not want his daughters to be 'punished with a baby' because of a crisis pregnancy [a "mistake"] -- hardly a welcoming attitude toward new life." As NRLC Executive Director David N. O'Steen, Ph.D., told the Washington Times, Obama "would want his own grandchild aborted. It shows a real callous disregard for human life."

And it really does. Sure, there is his voting record, appalling on every score. As a United States Senator, he's hewed to the pro-abortion line. As an Illinois state Senator, he did likewise, except when a part of the local pro-abortion establishment gave him a pass to vote "present" seven times.

If that weren't enough, he played a pivotal role in preventing the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act from passing in Illinois. BAIPA was very similar to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which President Bush signed into law in 2002.

As columnist John Leo once wrote, "In effect, the bill says that babies born during abortions must be put on the same plane and extended the same care and constitutional protections as other babies. Once born, they cannot be discriminated against, killed, or allowed to die simply because they are unwanted."

And if support for abortion and infanticide weren't enough, Obama completed the anti-life trifecta in response to a question from NBC News' Tim Russert. Russert asked him if there was any vote he could take back, and Obama said it would be not objecting to a measure that gave Terri Schindler Schiavo's family one last chance in the federal courts to save their daughter from a hideous death by starvation and dehydration.

But for all this, Obama's comments over the weekend may be the most telling of all, for as Dr. O'Steen told the Washington Times, "This is a window into his soul."