Editor's note. For Thursday, I've included what I consider to be three extremely interesting articles.

Part Three relates to the back-to-back ads I heard on the radio at 7:30 this morning working out at a gym.

Part Two is a remarkably moving story about a woman who came out of what was diagnosed as a "vegetative state" for nearly seven years. However, after being awake for three days and talking to family, Wednesday she drifted back into what one account described as a "minimally conscious state." I hope you read them both.

I hope you will drop me a line about any or all of these editions. Write Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com

The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area is notoriously inept when dealing with snow. This is true even when, as was the case last night, the amount is minimal. Combine the unforgiving weather with the normal slack time that movie theatres experience in the middle of the week, and it was no surprise that my wife, myself, and our three daughters comprised exactly half of the audience for the 7:10 performance of Amazing Grace.

Likely, most TN&V readers have heard of the film, many have probably already seen the story of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce, and no doubt all see the parallels to the great social justice movement of our time. For those who might not know the basics, it was Wilberforce who led what seemed to be an utterly quixotic campaign to end the British slave trade in the waning years of the 18th century.

When the film begins, the audience reads a description of the barbaric slave trade capped with a reminder that when Wilberforce gave his maiden Parliamentary speech against the slave trade in 1789, very few people opposed the slave trade, and only a few of them had the courage to speak up. Amazing Grace does a brilliant job clarifying how Wilberforce's opponents shrewdly portrayed the fight to end the slave trade as tantamount to undermining the British Economy, the British Empire, and the then-British Way of Life [a.k.a. rule by the aristocracy].

In addition to inspiring pro-lifers, there are many instructive lessons and parallels in Wilberforce's relentless and ultimately successful campaign. He faced odds that were laughably long. Virtually no one could possibly have imagined that working in conjunction with his boyhood friend, Prime Minister William Pitt, a tiny band of fellow members of Parliament, and what his opponents derisively labeled "itinerant preachers," Wilberforce would EVER carry the day.

But gradually they made strides, according to the film. The battle to end the slave trade was at its highest tide just before war loomed with Napoleonic France. Parliament's focus turned in that direction--it was seen as unpatriotic to even bring up the slave trade--and Wilberforce (his health always fragile) was understandably despondent.

John Newton, the former captain of a slave trade ship, and author of Amazing Grace, the most famous hymn of all time, is shown not only to have been the decisive force in persuading Wilberforce to enter politics, rather than the ministry, in the first place, but also be the man who bucked him up in his darkest hours.

Against common sense, virtually the entire British Establishment, and a massive indifference to the misery of countless thousands of men, women, and children, Wilberforce and his allies did prevail, ending the British slave trade in 1807. In 1833, shortly after he died, Parliament passed a law making the entire institution of slavery illegal.

(For whatever reasons, Amazing Grace seriously underplays the religious underpinnings, not only of Wilberforce himself, but the entire transcontinental movement to abolish slavery, in England and the United States. And there is only a hint at how abolitionists were considered riff-raff, not to be taken seriously.)

But the part I will always remember was how the misery of slavery was brought home to one small assembly of MPs and their wives. They are out on a ship, eating the finest foods, serenaded by a small string quartet, when they are steered near a docked ship by the MP who arraigned for their trip.

Wilberforce suddenly appears on deck across the way. He forcefully explains how hundreds of slaves had set out from the Caribbean but how half to two-thirds died during the passage. The assembled aristocracy begins to put handkerchiefs to their noses. Wilberforce insists they do not, for what they are experiencing, he tells them, is the smell of death which they are never to forget.

There is, I suppose, no exact counterpart to the victims of abortion. Planned Parenthood, with far more money than scruples, tidies up their killing machinery. The odor of burning fetal remains is largely sanitized in all but a few abortion clinics, and the killing is always done behind closed doors.

See Amazing Grace, if you possibly can. If you miss it at the theatre, be sure to rent the film on DVD. I promise you'll be inspired, uplifted, and reminded that so long as we refuse to give into discouragement, with God's help, someday the scourge of abortion will be removed from our great nation.

If you have a comment or a question, please write Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com

Part Two
Part Three