Laughably Out of Touch

"The Supreme Court overruled today all state laws that prohibit or restrict a woman's right to obtain an abortion during her first three months of pregnancy. The vote was 7-2. In an historic resolution of a fiercely controversial issue...."

"High Court Rules Abortion Legal," New York Times, January 23, 1973

Roe v. Wade offered "a sound foundation for final and reasonable resolution" of the abortion debate.

New York Times editorial, January 23, 1973

"I really thought the opinion had been written in concrete."

Sarah Weddington, the pro-abortion attorney who litigated Roe v. Wade, appearing on CBS's The Early Show, January 22, 2003

"At the same time, the iconography of the abortion-rights movement is fading from memory. Indeed, pro-choice stalwarts pitched themselves to a younger audience more than four years ago with a multimillion-dollar campaign in which some of the ads featured coat hangers. To some of the movement's newest members, the message seemed almost laughably out of touch."

Time magazine, January 27, 2003

I am sorely tempted to devote the next 40 or so column inches to a series of "that was then, this is now" quotes. But that would be gloating, which is not only ungentlemanly but also ignores that our 30-year-long journey to protect the most vulnerable still has many miles to go.

This edition of the "right to life newspaper of record" covers the waterfront, beginning with extensive coverage of Roe v. Wade commemorative activities in Washington, D.C., and around the nation. Appropriately, however, we begin on page one with the six Democratic presidential candidates kowtowing to NARAL's Kate Michelman "like spindly schoolboys" (in Noemie Emery's lovely description) "summoned into the principal's office to be brought into line: into the party line, which they spouted with reverence."

The six tussled for who could be the most "pro-choice." The most painful to watch was Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt, who long ago wrestled with his conscience and pinned it cleanly.

Elected as a pro-lifer, Gephardt voted that way until 1986 when he had to scratch the presidential itch. How to explain to NARAL (now known as "NARAL Pro-Choice America") how/why he had been outside the fold for so long?

Easy. His background/parents taught him abortion was wrong. He went to Washington having been taught "[t]here was a moral reason it was illegal."

Not initially realizing "the full consequence of my beliefs," Gephardt said that when he came to Congress he "listened." His eyes were opened by "friends and by colleagues and by strangers, by women I didn't know and would never meet again and by members of my close family." He gained "wisdom."

Luckily for Gephardt his epiphany occurred just in time to announce he was running for President. But pro-abortionists shouldn't worry about his sincerity, Gephardt assured them. His "true change of heart" had not come quickly or easily.

Besides, who could top this for servility?

"There are many uncertainties in life, but on this earth, in this country, there is one thing that must be certain, and that is the freedom to choose."

Also you'll find on page one Douglas Johnson's excellent overview of NRLC's two immediate primary initiatives: banning partial-birth abortions and banning all human cloning. In both cases opponents understand the strong public support for each and are test marketing phony "compromises" which (a) would not stop a single partial-birth abortion and (b) would not only not prevent human cloning but make it compulsory to kill the new human within 14 days!

So, in that sense, it's back to the future with a vengeance. Pro-lifers offer measures the public welcomes. Working hand in glove with a mostly supine press corps, pro-abortionists respond with disingenuous rhetoric tarring pro-lifers with the "extremists" brush. Never mind that the public is far closer to us than to them.

But while it's not new for Democrats to make their pilgrimage to NARAL or for the media to continue to intimate that Roe legalized abortion only in the first trimester (30 years after first misstating what the decision held), there is other news that is much more encouraging. It begins, as most good things ultimately must, with younger people.

The profile of many, if not most, of the annual March for Life attendees this year began with a stark demographic fact: there were a gazillion teenage and college-age people in attendance.

Take it from someone who's been at every March since 1982, each year the average age gets younger.

Our benighted opposition, not to put too fine a point on this, is in a near panic. As NRLC's Derrick Jones told Time magazine, "They just assumed the post-Roes would be on their side."

The hotbeds of college pro-abortion orthodoxy (the Berkeleys and the Harvards, for example)--once almost monolithically anti-life--are now witnessing the birth of pro-life campus groups. Young people are by instinct counter-cultural. To support life in an anti-life environment is the ultimate counter-cultural expression.

So, please read this edition from cover to cover. I guarantee you it will be worth your while. Please, please, please give gift subscriptions to family, friends, colleagues, libraries, churches, and public officials. (See page 20.)

When it comes to getting the word out, if not you, who? If not now, when?

Keep in touch. And do keep up to date by going to NRLC's web page at www.nrlc.org each and every day.

dave andrusko can be reached at dadandrusk@aol.com