"I will continue to do everything I can to make sure that every child in America is a wanted child, raised in loving, strong family. Ultimately, that idea is what the anniversary of Roe v. Wade celebrates."
From President Clinton's videotaped
remarks heard at the
Jan. 22 NARAL luncheon
"Jan. 22 rightfully should be marked as a day of lamentation....It
should be a day to grieve for lost potential, lost love, lost hopes, lost
life."
Joan Beck, Chicago Tribune,
Jan. 20
"Roe may still stand as the law of the land, but the rhetorical ground
has been shaken in the last two and a half decades, perhaps most seismically
since the `partial birth'-ban crusade began three years ago. This right
wing victory, along with the Roe anniversary, is giving rise to some serious
stock-taking among reproductive rights activists."
Alisa Solomon, Village Voice
Alisa Solomon's piercing shriek, taken from an apoplectic article
she wrote last month for the robustly pro-abortion Village Voice
magazine, is only one of numerous similar quotes that could have been cited.
Please understand, our benighted opposition is rattled, their usual
bravado replaced with panicky warnings that the sky is falling. Let's see
why.
No matter how tough the immediate going may have been, for 25 years they
had clung to the comfortable illusion the war was already won. Granted,
there were yearly skirmishes but these were only mopping-up operations to
guarantee that the killing machine went about grinding up its victims unimpeded.
Yet, here pro-abortionists are, on the silver anniversary of the inaugural
of carnage on a stupendous scale, battling to fend off perhaps the strongest
pro-life offensive ever. What in the world had happened?!
Sensing the near panic, their media shills, such as Ellen Goodman and Carl
Rowan, took the occasion to assure these nervous nellies that unfettered
access to abortion will weather the latest storm. Holding their hands, they
murmured soothing reassurances such as, "Sure, times are tough, but
don't forget that abortion's continuing viability rests safely on two rock-solid
underpinnings: (l) emerging abortion techniques which will make it easier
to kill unborn babies earlier in pregnancy, and (2) millions of women have
a personal stake in preserving abortion, having themselves undergone the
`procedure.'"
But will the impact of this really be what pro-abortionists expect? Newsweek
partially affirmed and partly dissented. "As the [25th} anniversary
[of Roe v. Wade] is marked this week by rallies and protests, the
political and moral landscape keeps shifting," the magazine stated.
The "driving force," Newsweek contended, "is technologyits
ability both to make fetuses viable earlier and to abort them earlier."
Let's examine the former first.
Few appreciate what wonders a quick reminder of elementary embryology can
work. As Randall O'Bannon notes in his page 6 story on opinion polls, when
asked in a recent poll "whether they would endorse abortion `after
fetal brainwaves are detected' (the sixth week of the baby's life) or 'after
the fetal heartbeat is begun' (approximately three weeks), 61% and 58%,
respectively, said 'abortion should not be permitted.' "
Another reason I'm optimistic about the learning curve I take from a personal
experience that goes back to 1979. Along with the woman who would later
be my wife, I was at a local high school to present the pro-life side of
the abortion debate.
Things were going very well until a captain-of-the-football-team type glanced
at a picture of an unborn baby at 4-6 weeks and said incredulously, "That
doesn't look like a baby to me!" Our response was not nearly
as eloquent as the following quote from the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus but
it conveyed the same message: "Many people look at a picture of a four-week-old
embryo and say that it does not look like a human being. But of course they
are wrong. That is exactly what a four-week-old unborn baby looks like;
it is exactly what we looked like when we were four weeks old." [Taken
from "The Church's Love Letter to the World."] I recall that our
response did not seem to change the young man's mind, but it did have a
discernibly positive impact on the women in the class.
Consciousness-raising is even easier when the baby is older, as we have
repeatedly seen in the debate over partial-birth abortion. Together, these
separate but overlapping discussions constitute a more potent combination
than even pro-lifers may realize. Add to this the subtle but tantalizing
influence that comes about because pregnant women now routinely have ultrasounds.
Comparatively speaking, ultrasound technology is in its infancy. Just imagine
the clarity, the vividness of color ultrasounds in five years. All in all,
the ingredients exist for a major breakthrough.
Space does not permit an elaborate rebuttal of the second reassurance with
which pro-abortionists console themselves. Let me just make this observation.
That millions of women have undergone
abortions does not translate into an army of pro- abortion
partisans. Abortion hurts - - physically, psychologicaly, spiritually.
Of those who become activists, I can assure you that far more aborted women
will swell our ranks than will join the other side.
Next issue I will discuss several more striking examples of the rethinking
and repositioning forced on abortion supporters by the stomach-turning impact
of partial-birth abortion. One will be a recent column that appeared in
an otherwise utterly forgettable issue of the magazine George. Written
by Naomi Wolf, its chilling title was "The Dead Baby Boom."
In a few words her thesis is that partial-birth abortions are so painful
to contemplate that "the image pushing to the forefront of our culture
is that of a tortured fetus outside the womb." Whether the victim
is a newborn or an infant, these are "suffering babies" tormented
by their own parents.
What Wolf labels "latent guilt" surfaces in popular culture in
films and television programs as a near-preoccupation with examples of child
abandonment, child abuse, and child murder.
So, too, with everyday media accounts where the subtext of news stories
that "mostly pro-choice reporters" are writing about partial-birth
abortion is "moral confusion." In Wolf's view, subconsciously
reporters are wrestling with this moral dilemma: "What indeed is the
real difference between the eight-month-old fetus in the clean, legal surgical
disposal system and the nine-month-old fetus that was left in the bathroom
trash? Where is the line?"
Where indeed! Stay tuned. Your work is paying off to an extent unimaginable
only one year ago.
dha