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Then…and Now: The
times, they are a-changing By Dave Andrusko Sometimes coincidences come in pairs, but not like this. While I know I risk making too much of this, my guess is you will agree together they say something about the transformation that is clearly in the air. On Wednesday, we reprinted a superb column from Minnesota Public Radio News written by Scott Fischbach, executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (http://www.nrlc.org/NewsToday/MNnotabortions.html). It's been a long time since I lived in Minnesota, but I was shocked to see that MPR had actually solicited a piece. Not exactly a bastion of pro-life sentiment. Imagine my further shock when it turns out the man from MPR who worked with Scott was the same guy who'd been the editor of the Minnesota Daily way, way back when I wrote for the University of Minnesota's student newspaper in the late 1970s. As you might expect, even more than today, back in the seventies pro-lifers on college newspapers were rarer than hen's teeth. However, since I covered City Hall, abortion was an issue that I wrote about. In those days a fair number of the Democrats who held local office were pro-life, and especially in the race for mayor of Minneapolis, the issue was prominent because it was a way of differentiating among the many Democrats who were competing. Abortion didn't come up much in the news room for the simple reason it was assumed--it was a given-- that no progressive, right-thinking journalist would be caught dead opposing a "woman's right to choose." When you breathed the air in the basement of Murphy Hall, you practically inhaled support for abortion. Cut to 30+ years later. I'm working away on Thursday's TN&Vs when Scott drops me an email. Attached in an editorial cartoon from the self-same Minnesota Daily. The drawing is of a pregnant woman shouting "Pro-Choice!" We see her unborn child asking, "Choice? What about mine?" You could have knocked me over with a copy of a 1978 Minnesota Daily newspaper. The times, they are a-changing. |