In just a second I will reflect on the amazing self-exculpatory comments of a Canadian "abortion doctor." First, one quick preliminary

Tomorrow is, as they say, a kind of Super Tuesday. A record 24 states hold primaries and caucuses Tuesday, including my home state of Minnesota.

The conventional wisdom is that the GOP nominating fight may essentially be all over but the shouting come Tuesday evening. You'd think after the dismal record compiled by political reporters and pollsters that they would be much, much more cautious.

(For an absolutely fascinating and illuminating discussion of  the whys and wherefores of these gaffs and egegreious errors, check out "Why We Keep Getting Snowed by the Polls" at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102915.html. I promise you'll never look at any poll results the same way again.)

By contrast, the dominant political narrative is that pro-abortion Democratic Senators Clinton and Obama will split the delegates who are at sake tomorrow, although the Illinois Senator is supposedly gaining on the Senator from New York virtually everywhere. Under that scenario, an already nasty fight could only get uglier.

Which brings to mind, "Why I am an abortion doctor," which appeared in the Canadian publication, the National Post. [www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=283931]. According to the introduction, the story was actually remarks abortionist Garson Romalis delivered at the University of Toronto Law School's Symposium marking the 20th anniversary of the pivotal Canadian Supreme Court case of R. vs. Morgentaler.

Romalis offers every possible justification for his line of work, but his bottom line is, "I can take a woman, in the biggest trouble she has ever experienced in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life.' He doesn't even besmirching the nature of the unborn. Why bother? His is the caring work of a man whose conscience is untroubled.

He tells us he is a friend of abortionist Henry Morgentaler. When the Canadian High Court ruled in favor of Canada's best known abortionist in 1988, the Court threw out the entire law on abortion on the grounds that it violated a woman's right to security of person. The decision was just as momentous for Canadians as Roe v Wade was for Americans.

A friend writes that pro-abortionists "like to quote all the parts of the Morgentaler decision they like, but the majority of the Court also stated that the state had a legitimate interest in the state of the fetus, and this should be the work of the elected parliamentary members, who could then craft a law respecting the fetus' rights at certain stages in pregnancy."

Even though 66% of Canadians say abortion should be illegal in certain circumstances, there has never been the kind of political will to make this happen. It doesn't help that, overwhelming, Canada's press is pro-abortion to the hilt.

But that does not keep the pro-life community from trying. In a commentary published last week, Will Johnston, President of Physicians for Life, bemoaned the fact that Canada "remains the only civilized country in the world with no legal restraint on abortion."

Beyond the utterly unnecessary death of the child, abortion presents dangers to the pregnant women, Johnston wrote. He cited a raft of complications.

"An independent Ontario study revealed that in the first 3 months after abortion, a woman falls victim to:

* a 4-times rate of hospitalization for infection
* a 5-times rate of hospitalization for another surgical procedure
* a 5-times rate of hospitalization for psychiatric care, in a health care system when only the most dire psychological cases can get a hospital bed."

Johnston concluded, "The world literature is replete with the reported increased risk of infertility, breast cancer, and subsequent premature delivery and its associated higher rate of cerebral palsy after an earlier abortion."

Suffice it to say that these real-life examples of abortion's ugly aftermath put the lie to Romalis' fairy tale of abortion as a "five minute operation, in comfort and dignity" which "can give her back her life."

Part Two