"Like the gypsy in Verdi's opera, II Trovatore, our frustration
has driven us to desperate acts. Outraged by the Count's cruel injustice,
she stole his infant son and, in a crazed act of vengeance, flung him into
the fire. Or so she thought. For, in turning around, she discovered that
the Count's son lay safe on the ground behind her; it was her own son she
had thrown into the flames. In our desperate bid for justice, we have not
yet realized whom we have thrown into the flames; the moment of realization
will be as devastating for us as it was for her. Until that time, legal
abortion invites us to go on doing it, 4,500 times a day. And, with ruthless
efficiency, the machine grinds on."
Frederica Mathewes-Green, American Feminist, spring 1998
Columnist George Will once shrewdly observed that for too many in
today's public policy environment, "the truth of a proposition matters
less than the utility of the proposition in serving a political agenda."
No better illustration could possibly be offered than the pro-abortion lobby
which has to be goaded to feign even a passing nod at squaring its rhetoric
with reality.
Pro-lifers are motivated by a deep sense of responsibility for the vulnerable and sustained by an abiding conviction that, in the end, light will vanquish darkness. We believe it is a self-evident truth that a civil society cannot forever endure such uncivilized behavior as abortion.
Furthermore, our national charter - - the Declaration of Independence and its majestic guarantees of life and liberty for all - - stands not only unfulfilled so long as the littlest Americans are without legal protection but mocked. How can correction not be inevitable? But is there evidence of a mid-course correction? Yes!
This reappraisal is showing up on Main Street - - public opinion polls - - but also in some very unexpected precincts - - the environs of pro-abortion partisans. We discussed the former at length in the last issue of NRL News. Here let's just briefly recapitulate.
As the January 16 New York Times put it [in reporting on the results of its first survey devoted to abortion since 1989!], "overall, since 1989 supporters of generally available legal abortion have slipped from 40 percent to 32 percent..." Survey data from many other sources evidence many promising trends. Examples include an over one-third increase in the percentage of people who self-identify as "pro-life" and overwhelming support for such protective legislation as parental involvement in the abortion decisions of minor girls.
Yes, the scent of serious change is in the air. You can almost smell the fear coming from pro-abortionists as they (1) admit that the ground is shifting in the abortion debate; (2) quarrel over what caused the turnabout; and (3) bicker over which political strategy will best serve them in this less favorable environment. Space allows us to look at only one highly illuminating example.
Take the time to go to the library and carefully
ponder Naomi Wolf's astonishing essay in the January 27 issue of George
magazine titled "The Dead Baby Boom." Her brutally candid assessment
of the impact of the debate over partial-birth abortions is dead right:
"The brutal imagery, along with the admission by pro-choice leaders
that they had not been candid about how routinely the procedure was performed
instigated pro-choice audiences' reevaluation of where
they stood."
The result, she maintains, is that "The ground has shifted in the abortion wars." Before Wolf offers her "solution," however, she brilliantly ferrets out the many ways - - consciously and unconsciously - - our culture is handling/denying/sublimating the grotesque reality that is abortionists sucking out the brains of unborn babies.
Wolf's challenging argument is that in large measure thoughts of "maimed fetuses" are too "painful" for the conscious mind. Thus, "in a perfect manifestation of Freudian logic - - the sleeping mind trying to ask a question that's too difficult for the conscious mind to handle - - the image pushing to the forefront of our culture is that of a tortured fetus outside the womb" (emphasis hers).
Wolf offers examples of "dead babies everywhere" - - from films, television programs, crime dramas, you name it: Drug-addled women coming out of their stupors to find their baby has starved to death; quivering crack babies delivered to strung-out addicts; rich college kids who murder their "inconvenient" newborns.
Whether the victim be a newborn or an infant, Wolf writes, the moral is the same: "Selfish, pleasure-driven parents were moving beyond being abusive to a point at which the basic bonds of civilization, the instinct of parental protectiveness, seem to have frayed." Because it is, in reality, actually about partial-birth abortion, this "resonated with the American mind."
Wolf then moves from the arts to the everyday world of journalism. She finds the "mostly pro-choice reporters" disoriented by partial-birth abortions, their accounts laden with "moral confusion." Why?
Because at some level they are asking themselves this deeply troubling question: "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 difference?"
Wolf is much annoyed that pro-lifers linked this brutalization to the coarsening of the human heart which we believe is an inevitable concomitant of obliterating our own children. More important than this feeble protest, however, is her insistence that none of this "portends" a pro-life victory provided pro-choicers adopt "common-ground initiatives." Some we have no problems with (facilitating adoption), others are outside our purview, while still others show the desperation of some of the more analytical pro-abortion minds: "a national campaign to make earlier abortion more readily available." This, mind you, a "common-ground initiative." This is a long, long way from 1993 when (according to columnist Fred Barnes) Bill Clinton was surprised the Pro-Life Movement hadn't faded away.
In the final analysis, what is there about partial-birth abortion that so unsettles everyone?
Whether people consciously understand it or not, partial-birth abortion compels them to acknowledge that a second person exists. An incredible breakthrough, mind you, but incomplete without what Roger Kimball (in another context) calls the "antidote to selfishness." But where does one look to find the antidote to the selfish abandonment of our own little ones?
It's right at hand. It's you! With apologies to the late Marshall McLuhan (who was pro-life, by the way), that is why we can never emphasize enough that in the abortion context the "medium" - - each and every pro-lifer - - is the message.
Each time your attitude extends the message of compassion to a hurting woman; each time the doors of your home swing open to a pregnant girl with nowhere to turn; each time you stand up and shout a defiant "no!" to a world in love with death, you are a living antidote to abortion's poisonous self-centeredness.
Ethically, for 25 years, America has stumbled down a dimly lit alley. She does not yet know that you have already taken her hand and are leading her out of the darkness and into the light.
dha