Redoubling Our Dedication
as the Obama Presidency Begins
Editor's note. Please send me your thoughts at
daveandrusko@gmail.com.
I'm writing this edition the
evening before Barack Obama makes the last step in his journey from
President-elect Obama to President Obama. On Wednesday I'll take a
stab at analyzing what he says in his Inaugural Address. There will
be much to mull over, so let me just address a couple of points
here.
Pro-lifers might be a tad bit
less willing to cry double standard if the media insistence that we
stand as one behind pro-abortion President Obama had been matched by
an equally vigorous admonition that we stand foursquare behind
pro-life President Bush when he was first elected in 2000. But, of
course, it comes as no surprise that we should be vigorously
admonished to check all doubt and criticism at the door, since the
Media Establishment both agrees with Obama's overall agenda and has
served as a flying wedge for well over a year.
Just so I am clear: if
President Obama were to have a Dr. Bernard Nathanson-like
turnabout--exchanging a passionate embrace of the Planned Parenthood
agenda for the role of protector of unborn children--we would
welcome him with open arms. Since all the signs we've seen since
Obama first surfaced on the national scene (and even before) make
that reversal close to impossible (including the choice of a cadre
of abortion insiders for key Administration positions), we
anticipate that we will be going head-to-head with the 44th
President beginning January 20.
I am 63 years old. This means
I am old enough to know what conditions were like for
African-Americans and to rejoice at how enormously they have changed
for the better. Like most people, my first instinct is to cut our
first African-American president a lot of slack.
But pro-lifers, whose job it
is to return justice to the Littlest Americans, do not have the
luxury of being blinded by an appreciation that Obama's election
could happen "only in America." If unchecked, Obama's Abortion
Agenda--as broad as it is lethal, as all encompassing as it is
unjust-- would inject discrimination against the unborn into every
nook and cranny of our culture for decades to come.
As we watch him raise his
right hand to swear to "preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution," we will be saddened by the knowledge that President
Obama--the man who admonished us to "give hope a chance"-- is in
league with the worst enemies of life, the sort who would never
think to give an "unplanned pregnancy" a chance.
It is the bitterest of
historical ironies that Obama has joined his fortunes to the kind of
organizations whose "growth market" is young pregnant women of color
and for whom there can never be enough dead babies.
So that is why, like all
Americans, I am deeply grateful that our great nation has
experienced another peaceful transition of power, in this instance
to a member of a previously excluded group. But gratitude for this
does not in anyway lessen or diminish your and my determination to
end the injustice of abortion.
Indeed, it only redoubles our
dedication to topple the regime of Roe v. Wade. |