Our Prayers Go Out to the Family of Tony Snow -- Part One of Three 

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When I learned that Tony Snow had died Saturday of colon cancer, my thoughts instantly turned to his wife Jill and their three children. I have one more kid than Tony (and mine are older), but the resemblances are close enough that I felt even more moved by his death than Tim Russert's.

Among their colleagues, I think it fair to say that Snow and Russert were among the most popular journalists in Washington. With his unmatched "Meet the Press" platform, Russert was better known. But Snow, a staunch, unapologetic pro-lifer, should be remembered as occupying a similar perch in the contemporary journalism pantheon.

Tony Snow

Properly, "Fox News Sunday" devoted its entire hour yesterday to fond remembrances of Snow, 53. From 1996 to 2003, he hosted the program, the first news program on Fox. Before he was named White House press secretary in April 2006, Snow also hosted "Weekend Live with Tony Snow" on Fox News Channel and "Tony Snow Live" on Fox News Radio.

Until I read a column by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz this morning, I had forgotten that Snow was also once the editorial page editor for the Washington Times, a commentator for National Public Radio, and a substitute for Rush Limbaugh..

Universally, the two qualities that were mentioned were that Snow held strong opinions but respected those who held contrary views. And he could "disagree without being disagreeable," a model for all of us.

His back and forths with the always contentious White House press corps are the stuff of legend. Even those who were not willing to give anyone connected with the Bush White House a fair shake agreed, at a minimum, that Snow was dazzlingly articulate, animated, and gave as good as he got. "He raised everyone's game," as one reporter put it.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace said the program "was developed around a central vision, then showed a video of Snow explaining what that vision was: 'Explain America to Washington and Washington to America -- that's kind of what you do.  It's nice to humanize the figures who are right at the center of American politics, and at the same time, I think it's important to be the advocate for the people listening.'"

Snow was also a forthright advocate for unborn babies. As we say goodbye to one of the really good guys, I'd like to reprint portions of a column he wrote in 2000 after the Supreme Court handed down its morally bankrupt Stenberg v. Carhart decision.

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The U.S Supreme Court['s] latest foray into the issue, in the case of Stenberg vs. Carhart, treats abortion as a "right" of such majesty and force that no state can limit its use -- no matter how barbaric the methods -- once a doctor has cooed into a woman's ear, "This is what's best for you, dear."

Opinions drafted by Justices Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connor exhibit traits familiar to students of the topic. They cited selected precedents but took care not to examine the Constitution itself. They sought refuge in euphemism. They embraced dubious medical opinion. And they showered contempt on the legislative process by telling 30 states to go fly a kite.

Justice Antonin Scalia noted piquantly that the opinion deserves a place in history beside the Korematsu decision, in which the court approved internment camps for Japanese-Americans, and the Dred Scott decision, which gave the court's imprimatur to Jim Crow.

Here's the core of the controversy: Nebraska outlawed partial-birth abortion, in which a doctor dilates a pregnant woman's cervix, initiates delivery of the baby, reaches into the uterus so the child will enter the birth canal feet-first, coaxes the feet and torso into the world -- then plunges scissors into the base of the child's skull, opens the cranial cavity, inserts a tube, sucks out the brains, collapses the skull and yanks out the limp corpse.

A shaken nurse told Congress about her experience with the procedure: "The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.

"The doctor opened the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby went completely limp."

The pioneer of the technique, Dr. Martin Haskell, notes that a doctor sometimes over-dilates the patient and has to hold the baby's head inside the vagina: "(T)he fetus could just fall out. But that's not really the point. The point here is you're attempting to do an abortion ... not to see how do I manipulate the situation so that I get a live birth instead."

Even though the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology have decreed that this operation never is the sole or preferred method of abortion -- research indicates that it's more dangerous than "traditional" abortions, which themselves are more dangerous than childbirth -- Nebraska tried to appease potential critics. …

The high court still tossed the statute away. It averted its eyes from the surgical technique, which it referred to merely as "D." And it claimed Nebraska's "health" clause didn't go far enough: The state needed to legalize butchery for women plagued with other conditions, such as depression. As Scalia noted, this logic gives "live-birth abortion free rein."

The prim, dense prose of the majority opinions obscures the sleight-of-hand required to produce the result. The court not only ignored its own precedents, it also abandoned the practice of reading state statutes as sympathetically as possible. …

In short, five people took it upon themselves to make law for the other 280 million in the country. They acted not as a court, but as a Star Chamber. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor tried to calm nerves by claiming that Nebraska could fix its statute and win her approval. But her tortured opinion indicates otherwise.

O'Connor's vote made it possible to deliver two-thirds of any baby -- healthy or not -- and kill the child. Her vote ensured continuing discord over the issue. Her vote demonstrated why it's better to hand such issues to legislatures than to five verbose jurisprudes who can't bear to describe what they have declared lawful and can't provide a single coherent reason why they replaced the legacy of Hippocrates with that of Dr. Mengele.

Part Two -- "The Culture of Death is an Idea Before it is a Deed"
Part Three -- "We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest"