Even though it was a hundred or so years ago, I vividly remember the commencement address at my college graduation. Not for the contents, mind you. I recall the pithy remarks delivered by the President of the University of Minnesota because they lasted all of about two minutes before the rains came and drowned out the remainder of his oration.

Speaking at Harvard's 357th commencement "Harry Potter" author J.W. Rowling spoke amusingly of the speaker who had shared her wisdom with Exeter University's graduating seniors 21 years before. While Rowling's commencement speaker (a Baroness, no less) had not been rained out, she might have been for all the impression she made. Rowling confessed that she could not remember a single word.

Then she offered a joke, provoking a gale of laughter, which prompted her to quip that the audience would remember the joke, which meant she was one step ahead of the Baroness.

I am neither pro- nor anti-Rowling's work. I was, however, immensely impressed by the thoughtfulness and compassion that permeated her June 5th speech.

She talked intriguingly about the "benefits of failure." Failure, for her, meant "stripping away the inessential." Indeed, had she succeed at something else she might not have directed all her energies into "finishing the only work that mattered to me."  Rowlings counseled the graduates to consider that "The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."

We've had more than our fair share of setbacks, but each time we have come back stronger, more enthusiastic, and more resolute. And through it all pro-lifers have learned a crucial lesson: they could count on other pro-lifers.

And then, for me, the most important section of Rowling's address where she "extol[led] the crucial importance of imagination." Imagination is the "uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not," the wellspring of innovation.

But imagination's "arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity," she said, is "the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared." Without having experienced what others have gone through people "can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places."

This is, Rowlings said, a "morally neutral" power. "One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize." Indeed, she reminded her audience, "many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.

"They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know."

I read that paragraph over and over. And each time I did I thought of all those people around the world who have taken up the defense of helpless unborn children.

Without fuss or expectations of reward, they faithfully exercise their moral imaginations each and every day. Not to manipulate or control--which is the dark side of imagination-- but to empathize and assist--which represents sunshine to the human spirit.

What pro-lifers must do can be difficult, somber, and occasionally overwhelming. But to refuse to take up that burden--to ignore the promptings of their hearts and minds-- would mean they had closed their hearts to suffering.

It would mean they stood by silently, refusing to stand athwart the machinery of death. And that is something no pro-lifer will ever do.