THE MAN FOR THIS SEASON

"The decision to reinstate the ['Mexico City Policy'] is not extreme but mainstream. But Bush gets credit for guts from the press, which cannot believe any scaling back of abortomania could be anything but radical and which played the story as startling and dramatic. Fine. Let the president take ironic bows."

Peggy Noonan,Wall Street Journal, January 26

"That's what the Supreme Court did in Roe vs. Wade, and has repeatedly done in periodic codicils to its original edict. Just this past term, in Stenberg vs. Carhart, the court expanded the apocryphal abortion right to an all-new right to stick a fork in the head of a half-born baby. The first lunacy keeps being rewritten to give abortion enthusiasts everything they could possibly want."

Ann Coulter, January 28

Are you like me? Did the reality that the Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue had finally ended only sink in when you actually saw George W. Bush take the oath of office? Goodness, what a relief! Pass the Dial soap, please.

Much of this edition of the "right to life newspaper of record" talks about the glorious first few weeks of the Bush Administration. Where we saw in Bill Clinton misshaped priorities and twisted values, we see in George W. Bush a humble man who will build upon the goodness that still resides in this great nation of ours.

Our instinct for justice and mercy and compassion needs only the right kind of man to rekindle the flames of renewal doused by our former President, a man who not only besmirched our nation's highest office but cynically exploited the American instinct to forgive and forgive and forgive again.

As a pro-lifer and history buff, I was much impressed by the depth of President Bush's understanding of our nation's past. The American story (as he said in his Inaugural Address) is "a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals."

The grandest of these ideals, Bush said, "is an unfolding American promise: that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born. Americans are called to enact this promise in our lives and in our laws. And though our nation has sometimes halted, and sometimes delayed, we must follow no other course."

Indeed, is that not the nub of what you and I have been saying for nearly 30 years?

A sharp detour here, if you don't mind, for just a moment. A couple of years ago science writer Jim Holt wrote a provocative piece for the Wall Street Journal which I kept.

Our bodies, he observed, are infected with parasites and bacteria. It is by "evolving rapidly and finding the 'key' that unlocks our cellular defenses that they do their deadly mischief." Only by "changing the locks against them with equal or greater rapidity," Holt wrote, "can we keep them out." The tumblers in my mind clicked when I thought about this metaphor.

Tenderhearted folks that they are, pro-abortionists often compare the unborn to a parasite. In fact there is a parasite - - an "organism" which feeds off the host and contributes nothing - - but it is not the unborn child, it is the impulse to abort. Stay with me on this analogy.

The impulse to resort to killing our unborn children is ever present in us; after all we are mere mortals. So when a pregnancy presents what a woman perceives as a crisis, unless she possesses adequate defenses - - strong character and a loving support system - - that "parasite" (the impulse to abort) can easily win out.

The rapidly evolving pro-death mentality (it now attacks additional victims, such as the medically dependent elderly) has wreaked so much lethal havoc precisely because it's been so adept at finding the "key" to "unlock our defenses." Our task, following Holt's imagery, is to "change the locks" with "equal or greater rapidity."

By that we can mean any of a great number of things, all of which are important. Everything from volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center, to "changing the culture," to all-purpose pro- life education, to legislation and political action.

That latter endeavor by NRL PAC paid off handsomely, in spite of some naysayers. George W. Bush will be a strong pro-life President. Equally important as his convictions, I suspect, will be the kind of man he is.

If (to borrow from Marshall McLuhan) the medium is the message, it is never more true than with abortion. For if what we say ripples with anger or judgmentalism, the truth - - no matter how unassailable - - will fall on deaf ears.

President Bush, who really is a uniter, is the man for this season.

Keep him in your daily prayers. Pray for wisdom, strength, and courage.

And pray that all of our efforts on behalf of mothers and their unborn children bear fruit.

dave andrusko [ dha1245@juno.com ]