EDITORIALS

By Dave Andrusko

"And a Big Smile Could Be Discerned"

Although there will be excellent attendance at NRLC's annual convention July 1-3, naturally with a circulation of 360,000+, most readers of this edition of National Right to Life News will not be at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, Virginia. Yet I always have the attendees in mind as we cobble together the many news stories, opinion pieces, photos, inspiring quotations, and educational pieces that make up the pre-convention edition.

Partly that's because over the space of three days and four nights I will have the wonderful opportunity to speak with many attendees. Inevitably, part of those conversations, which often extend far into the night, will reflect the content of NRL News.

So when we compose the paper's contents we know that I (and so many others from NRLC) will be discussing with convention goers the issues raised. I try to envision each and every one of you as if you and I were sitting around the kitchen table sorting through the trials and triumphs of this great Movement.

Last Friday, as I started this editorial, I happened to read a review of a new movie coming out that day. Without getting into specifics, the reviewer's cultural insularity was amazing, even by the standards of those who run in the Media Elite circles. I know that if we ever talked, she wouldn't have a clue why massive numbers of people would find her favorable review patently offensive, not only because she praised parts that didn't warrant praise, but more for her stunning lack of knowledge about the kinds of people she so smugly ridiculed in her review.

Her sarcasm made me think of how the great people who comprise our Movement have been treated over the years. But what also came to mind is how far we've come since 1990 when a massive NRLC-sponsored "Rally for Life" was treated as if it were almost invisible by the Washington Post.

Twelve months before, that same newspaper showered extraordinary coverage on a rally sponsored by NOW. According to the Los Angeles Times's Staff Writer David Shaw, "[W]hen abortion-rights forces rallied in Washington a year earlier, the Post gave it extraordinary coverage, beginning with five stories in the five days leading up to the event, including a 6,550-word cover story in the paper's magazine on the abortion battle the day of the event. The Post even published a map, showing the march route, road closings, parking, subway, lost and found and first-aid information."

And, just for good measure, the next day the Post published another five stories, including a front-page story with three photos! In his 1990 pathbreaking four-part series on "Abortion and the Media," Shaw contrasted that with the Post's coverage of the Rally for Life: a single short story buried in the Metro section.

But the most revealing comment of all came from the Post's Managing Editor. "I said that when the abortion-rights people had their rally last April, we all got quite energized," he told Shaw. "We heard about it from our friends and colleagues."

In one of the great understatements of all time, Shaw wrote, "But Post reporters and editors - - like most journalists in other big-city news organizations - - don't seem to have many friends or colleagues who oppose abortion."

I mention this to emphasize the larger point: times have changed dramatically. We're hardly buddy-buddy with editors at the Post, or other high media muckety-mucks, but the coverage is much, much better. There are good reasons for that, and most of them begin with you!

Reporters understand that pro-lifers are a force to be reckoned with. They acknowledge that pro-lifers have a friend in the White House. And they read the same polls the Abortion Establishment does and reach the same conclusion. Increasingly, the American public - - especially younger Americans - - is finding a home in our Movement.

But this turnabout is the result less of reporters knowing more about us or the shift in public sentiment than it is about reporters knowing more about the ones we labor to defend:

the unborn child. Once largely invisible, the little ones are often directly in our line of sight and even more often observable to our peripheral vision.

Consider the impact of this May 17 story in the New York Times, titled "Fetal Photos." It's a mostly sympathetic but hardly uncritical look at fetal photo studios. The same ultrasounds that ordinarily would be taken in doctors' offices or medical clinics are now being taken in free-standing offices, often in upscale malls.

The typical setting, according to the Times, is anything but "a sterile hospital room." Music softly plays in the background and, for younger kids, off in the corner, there are Playstations.

And consider this response from what used to be called back in the Dark Ages a "clump of cells."

"Mrs. Fronimos's tiny daughter seemed to favor chocolate," the Times writes. "When the baby would not cooperate, choosing instead to shield herself with tiny hands from the prenatal equivalent of paparazzi, Ms. Johnson turned to a trick she picked up during the 20 years she has performed ultrasounds in doctors' offices.

"She gave the mother chocolate. 'It goes straight to the baby,'' Ms. Johnson said. ''It's a sugar rush.' Sure enough, the image on the screen soon became clearer, and a big smile could be discerned."

By accident or design, as reporters come to appreciate the marvelous intricacies of the unborn child, the dead weight of media pro-abortion orthodoxy is gradually being lifted.

When you read stories like the one that appeared in the Times, my guess is that, were that same reporter in the room with you, he would write, "a big smile could be discerned."

Dave Andrusko can be reached at dandrusko@nrlc.org