Intuiting Matters of the Heart
BY Dave Andrusko

"In our lifetime has there been a more politically poisonous Supreme Court decision than Roe v. Wade? Set aside for a moment your thoughts on the substance of the ruling. (I happen to be a supporter of legalized abortion.) I'm talking about the continuing damage to the republic: disenfranchising, instantly and without recourse, an enormous part of the American population; preventing, as even [Supreme Court Justice] Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, proper political settlement of the issue by the people and their representatives; making us the only nation in the West to have legalized abortion by judicial fiat rather than by the popular will expressed democratically."
     Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, September 16, 2005

Outside of presidential election season, I'd be hard pressed to name a 30-day period to compare in sheer importance to what has transpired in the month since we last published. At the top of the list of critically important developments, of course, is Harriet Miers' decision to withdraw as a candidate for the Supreme Court and, as a result, President Bush's selection of federal appeals court Judge Samuel Alito, Jr., to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. (See story, page one.)

Whenever there are changes on the High Court, abortion is item number one up for discussion and debate. Ordinarily, there is a kind of Gresham's Law at work whenever the topic arises.

By that I mean, what ought to be a sensible discussion about creating "rights" out of whole cloth, federalism, and our moral and ethical obligations to the most defenseless among us is often driven out of the intellectual marketplace by hysteria, bad history, and Chicken Little-like warnings that the end of the world (i.e., the end of Roe v. Wade) is at hand--the enduring pro-abortion bogeyman.

Although many news outlets still get it wrong, if you believe in the importance of accuracy, it's encouraging that at least some reporters are getting more of the particulars correct. For example, we know that, as of the last Supreme Court abortion decision in 2000, there were six pro-Roe votes on the Supreme Court, not five. More reporters are doing the math.

Obviously, we wish there were many more anti-Roe justices on the Court. But the simple truth is unborn children need three more justices on the Court who understand that Roe is indefensible. (Sometimes reporters are confused by Justice Anthony Kennedy's vote to uphold the ban on partial-birth abortion at issue in the 2000 case of Stenberg v. Carhart. However, in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, Kennedy played a pivotal role in reformulating the grounds on which to uphold the "core holdings" of Roe.)

Likewise, there is a greater appreciation among commentators who support Roe that the manner in which the abortion plague was visited on the land--seven unelected justices picking through the Constitution for imaginary "penumbras" and "emanations" to justify their flights of fancy--is a menace to civil harmony, our representative system of government, and is the source of unending controversy.

For those who place a premium on intellectual integrity, there is an awful price to pay to defend the indefensible. It demands of judges, in particular, verbal gymnastics of a high order.

As Edward Lazarus, who clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun, wrote last year, "Liberal judges found themselves in the ideologically comfortable but intellectually awkward position of zealously defending Roe, despite what even many liberals believed to be its weak constitutional foundation." Lazarus unabashedly supports abortion.

But he is also straightforward that Roe and Doe are almost entirely without a grounding in the Constitution. In another column Lazarus admitted, "Extending the unenumerated constitutional right to privacy to cover a woman's choice to have an abortion, required an analytical leap with little support in history or precedent."

But this is all a sort of rarified intellectual debate, the kind that law professors and specialists in abortion minutiae dwell on. People with less time don't need to be informed that Blackmun and six of his colleagues indulged in what Roe dissenter Justice Byron White called "an exercise in raw judicial power."
They intuit matters of the heart and soul. They know that abortion is unspeakably brutal. They sense that it not only costs the life of a child, but exacts a terrible price from her mother. In this dual sense, the idea that abortion is "victimless" is the cruelest of hoaxes.

This edition features three stories that highlight the fearsome dedication of grassroots pro-lifers, especially high school and college students. (See pages 16, 18, and 19.) These young people are like modern-day Johnny Appleseeds, sowing the seeds of respect for life. These faithful foot soldiers are a glimpse into the future.

Why are we winning over the youth of America? Pro-lifers in general, and young people in particular, have finely honed rubbish detectors. They simply are not buffaloed by nonsense and non-sequiturs; indeed, they are offended. Most importantly, they see beyond the superficial and the commonplace to deeper truths.
On page seven, there is a remarkable story written by Prof. Donald DeMarco. He mines the message of three films, all which dealt with miniaturization, to draw a vital conclusion: "Existence, nature, and intrinsic value are not controlled by size." Or, as Horton the Elephant observed, "A person's a person, no matter how small."

Let me conclude with a quick word about Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean hopscotching around the abortion issue. I believe it tells us much about the future of the abortion debate.

If you go to Today's News & Views for November 2, you will find an extended discussion of the meat grinder Dean ran into on MSNBC's Hardball Halloween night. To his credit, host Chris Matthews refused to let Dean indulge in his favorite pastime--leaping from one unsubstantiated charge to another. Without the net provided by a host unwilling to let him say anything, Dean crashed.

No one, beginning with Matthews, could miss the absurd lengths to which Dean went to avoid using the locution "pro-choice." Matthews kept grilling him: Aren't Democrats the party of "choice"? Dean tap-danced around that.

A perplexed Matthews asked, "Why do you hesitate from the phrase pro-choice?" "Because I think it's often misused," Dean said. "If you're pro-choice, it implies you're not pro-life. That's not true."

Their real position is, he said, is that "A woman and a family have a right to make up their own minds about their health care without government interference."

Pro-choice is pro-life, pro-life is pro-choice, you say tomayto, I say tomahto. Such is the absurd corner into which pro-abortionists have painted themselves.
Science and commonsense are ripping pages from the pro-abortion playbook, never very thick to begin with. The cliché-ridden script from which the NARALs and the Planned Parenthoods read is yellow with age.

For these reasons, and many more, the moral center of gravity is shifting. Truth is winning out because of your witness and because there is coherence and clarity and conviction to our cause.

We talk about all this and much more in our January 22 National Right to Life News Commemorative Issue. (For ordering information, see page six and www.nrlc.org.) This special edition is must reading!

This is a wonderful time to be a champion of unborn babies.