EDITORIAL
By Dave Andrusko

Forging a New Consensus

"The bottom line is no woman is going to want an abortion after seeing a sonogram."

Francesco Angelo, the medical director of
Family Planning Center in Mineola, New York,
quoted in the February 24, 2002, New York Times

"Society is like a Calder mobile. Touch it here, it trembles over there. Beliefs, habits, mores, dispositions are connected to one another in subtle ways and are related to behavior in many ways. Many of the ways are not known - - cannot be known - - until a chain of changes has begun."

George Will, "Statecraft as Soulcraft"

"We are a much more fetally aware society than we were when Roe came down."

Prof. David J. Garrow, a "scholar of the
abortion rights movement," as quoted
in the January 21, 2001, New York Times

Partly out of a sincere desire to get a handle on the cultural reference points of incoming freshmen, and partly, I assume, for fun, every year the faculty at the University of Beloit in Wisconsin surveys the incoming class. What they don't know, of course, is far more interesting for the over-30 set than what they're familiar with.

This year's crop of 18 and 19-year olds

"have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan Era and probably did not know he had ever been shot. They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was waged. ... There has been only one Pope. ... They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.

Tianamen Square means nothing to them. ... Roller skating has always meant inline for them. Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show. They have no idea when or why Jordache jeans were cool."

Worst of all, "They have never seen Larry Bird play"!

In light of this may I suggest we need to appreciate that (a) "Roe v. Wade" resonates far differently with them (and others not nearly so young) than it does with you and I; and (b) when the pro-aborts recycle items taken from their hoary bag of tricks it'll be new to many.

I had literally no sooner typed the above when I learned that "NARAL" has changed its name for the fourth time. Now the "National Abortion and Repro-ductive Rights Action League" wants to be called something equally gracious: "Naral Pro-Choice America."

The New York Times turned to David J. Garrow (a legal historian at Emory University, who is wholly in the pocket of the pro-abortion movement) for insight. As it happens Garrow's right on the money when he says "the organization was using its new name to put a greater emphasis on choice as opposed to abortion. 'It's a free way of getting 'pro-choice' into a news story, even if editors don't allow the words to be used in the reporter's voice,' Professor Garrow said."

Yet again, we're told, there will be a multi-million dollar campaign "to make abortion a critical issue," this time in the 2004 presidential election. Only, contrary to the Times's lead paragraph, it's not "abortion" that "Naral Pro- Choice America" will peddle but "choice." Now where have we heard that before?

Second and Third Thoughts

In the other editorial that begins on page two we'll trace the unsavory origins of the Movement that eviscerated all laws protecting the unborn. Let me close here with a word of encouragement.

Not so long ago no contentious subject was so cordoned off, so "surrounded by rhetorical landmines" (to borrow from writer Mary Eberstadt in another context) as abortion. Every criticism was ruled inadmissible in the court of public opinion. Why?

Because, by definition, all objections were "religious," as though embryology was a denomination, the impulse to defend the defenseless a sectarian doctrine, and the desire to help both mother and child a catechism memorized only by people of faith. Not any more. There is an irresistible tide that can be temporarily stopped up, occasionally diverted (by trickery), but never halted.

This is so because respect for unborn life is a banner that belongs exclusively on neither side of any divide, be it religious/secular, liberal/conservative, or male/female. It can be picked up and carried onward by anyone willing to stand against the cruelty and barbarism of abortion, beginning with you and me.

You've done so for many years. I have no doubt that you will continue to do so as long as it takes to return legal protection to unborn children.

dave andrusko can be reached at daveandrusko2002@yahoo.com