Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com

If you ever have occasion to read the Canadian press, almost universally its attitude towards abortion is that it is a "settled" issue. To them we are an exotic band of characters so out of touch with reality that we resemble nothing so much as those Japanese solders who, not knowing the Emperor had surrendered in 1945, hid themselves away for decades after the end of World War II.

But because we are seen for the most part as essentially harmless, periodically you get some interesting coverage. To take one recent example, there's a multi-part series written by Ann Marie McQueen that ran in mid-December in the Ottawa Sun.

The series ran in anticipation of the anniversary of the January 28, 1988, decision by the country's  Supreme Court which gutted Canada's abortion law. On December 20, McQueen ran a follow-up piece, the subhead of which was "The strangest thing about abortion is how many people want to hear nothing
about them."

The two operative paragraphs are as follows:

"In publishing the 'Abortion' series, which ran from Saturday to Tuesday, we
were expecting to be bombarded by letters from right-to-life organizations
and individuals. After all, I was not exploring if abortion was right or
wrong. I was checking in, taking the pulse. The law is, after all, the law.

"What took me aback the most were letters from people who have deeply
suffered from their abortions. From women, yes, but men too. I didn't expect
to have people pour out their hearts full of pain to me, a stranger
reminding them of the very procedure which scarred them so."

There are few more overworked similes than to compare the shifting/grinding of tectonic plates that cause volcanoes and earthquakes to develop to unseen forces in our workaday world that culminate in an eruption. But sometimes the comparison really is apropos.

Pro-abortionists have sympathizers everywhere in the major media outlets. This allows them to keep the public largely uninformed, or ill-informed, on abortion. But media distortions and omissions cannot indefinitely squelch the impact of the powerful underlying dynamics that are at work.

For decades pro-lifers have reiterated the obvious: that abortion not only kills unborn children, it also often emotionally maims their mothers. Or, as it commonly is put, abortion has two victims.

But if it wrong to pretend that abortion is "victimless" (the pro-abortion mantra), it is a distortion of a different kind to say that abortion ONLY has two victims. Clearly, as conferences such as the recent "Reclaiming Fatherhood" gathering in San Francisco demonstrate, there is very often a third victim: the fathers of these children. (See http://nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Dec07/nv120607.html and the January issue of National Right to Life News.)

We've written about this a lot of late, spurred on by what our side is saying and, frankly, also by what pro-abortionists have been telling one another.

On July 19, veteran pro-abortion scribe Eleanor Bader regaled the New York City chapter of NOW with tales about her undercover mission to scout out the pro-lifers who attended this year's NRLC convention.

But between the jokes and the jibes, Bader was deadly serious. Let me quote from a TN&V I wrote about her speech:

"Naturally, Bader and her audience felt free to ridicule and laugh at the workshop about 'Lost Fatherhood,' which was led by two men whose girlfriends had had abortions. To the pro-abortionists, talking about the pain abortion causes men--and the guilt these men feel for not supporting women in their hour of need--is just a pro-life PR stunt, an attempt to make men another 'victim.'

"Bader shares that view (this 'New Age' stuff can 'morph' into 'incredible  sexism and misogyny at the same time,' she said), but is smart enough not to allow her bias to obscure the overwhelming importance of this new development. These are men ('very articulate' and 'very compelling') who are pouring out their hearts and their guts. Bader advises that their side needs to figure out a response beyond saying 'this is just a bunch of ....'" [see http://nrlc.org/News_and_Views/September07/nv091907.html]

While there are many very positive signs as we approach the end of 2007, none is more significant than the growing inclusion of men into a debate from which they have long been unfairly excluded.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part Two