The longer I write Today's News & Views, now in its sixth year, the more I realize that everyone who reads NRL News must also avail themselves of this daily resource. The stark reality is that while cyberspace is essentially unbounded, a newspaper's news "hole" is severely limited.

So much has gone on since the March issue it's hard to do justice to the totality of what TN&V readers have learned by perusing 22 editions. But beyond trying to persuade you to take a gander at TN&V, I want to use this space to highlight some of what happened, discuss the contents of the April edition of the "pro-life newspaper of record," and take a quick look out over the horizon.

In response to legislative initiatives and clear shifts in popular culture our opposition has moved from jittery to extreme nervousness to suffering anxiety attacks. Behind the scenes they are no doubt calling all hands on deck. To the public they are testing a host of stratagems, the common denominator of which is to attempt to baptize the status quo.

For example, a few weeks ago 55 Catholic congressional Democrats, most of whom are pro-abortion, offered a "Statement of Principles." In their convoluted statement, they argued (a) it's okay for Catholics to disagree with their church on abortion, and (b) we're good on lots of other issues of importance to the Catholic Church.

Wouldn't you know, the point person for this statement was Rep. Rosa DeLauro. A 100% pro-abortion vote, DeLauro previously served as the executive director of EMILY's List, which supports only hardcore pro-abortion female candidates.

Writing on the Our Sunday Visitor Web page Gerry Korson hit the nail on the head. "That statement, released Feb. 28 on the website of Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), was widely seen as a thinly veiled defense of Catholic legislators who support laws that protect or expand legal abortion." In other words, these Catholic Democrats were advising the church leadership that abortion is important, but let's not go crazy.

This is about the 20th effort by pro-abortion Democrats since the November 2004 elections to extract themselves from the corner into which they've painted themselves. They can repackage abortion advocacy until the cows come home, but they will pay the electoral price until and unless they substitute substance for cosmetic changes.

In their own way Justices Ginsburg and (recently retired) O'Connor also tried to caulk the leaks in the pro-abortion vessel. One subtly, the other more bluntly, together they told critics of the Court's increasingly zany jurisprudence to be silent! They tried to smear critics with tactics unbecoming members of the highest court in the land.

One ploy was to link legitimate criticism with those criminally stupid nitwits who'd threatened the justices' lives. It was illogical, but who's asking?

A related strategy was to link opposition to the justices' carefree jurisprudence with those who in the past had opposed something which today we would all agree represents progress.

These "unfair insinuations" upset even the Washington Post. Referring to a speech Justice Ginsburg had delivered on the subject of the use of foreign law in American courts, the Post editorialized that Ginsburg "managed to link those who take an opposing view to the legacies of slavery and apartheid and to paint them as 'fuel[ing] the irrational fringe' in its threats against judges."

The question at issue here is not ours. But it would be if the Court started looking overseas for guidance. The irony is that were the justices to look overseas for enlightenment, they'd discover much less laissez faire abortion laws. The "extremists" are those who gave us Roe v. Wade.

Others worry about the potential political fallout of the "right" people not having children while the "Right" is. That is the insinuation of an article written by Phillip Longman which appeared in USA Today.

His argument in "The Liberal Baby Bust" can be summarized in two sentences. "Progressive secularists" have lots more dogs in their households than children. "Culturally conservative" families (variously labeled upholders of "traditional values," the "religiously-minded," and occupants of "a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society") love dogs, too, but have a lot more kids to take Bowser for a walk.

Without spending a lot of time on this, it's easy to see how this demographic development dovetails with what the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has dubbed "The Roe Effect."

As encapsulated by US News & World Report columnist Michael Barone, Taranto's thesis is, "Women who believe in abortion rights will have more abortions and fewer children, while those who oppose abortion will have more children and thus produce more voters in the next generation." Not a happy prospect for the rapidly aging pro-abortion leadership.

Shifting to the contents of the April edition of NRL News, I think you will be delighted. The issue blends hard news, a look ahead to the exciting NRL Convention, two profiles of the next generation, reviews of three important books, and the most detailed examination to be found anywhere of the deaths associated with the two-drug RU486 abortion technique.

Looking to the future, our state affiliates have sallied forth, using legislative proposals to illuminate the public's mind and remove obstacles to further progress. In 1912 Supreme Court Louis Brandeis wrote that "one of the happy incidents of the federal system" is that states may "serve as laboratories" to test legislative proposals. Elsewhere he referred to states as "laboratories of democracy."

That is exactly what is transpiring, upsetting the expectations of the Abortion Establishment which had anticipated that resistance would eventually die off.

Finally, it was not so long ago that we practically had to smuggle in the case for life. Major media opposition was so uniform--and there was little but the major media--that we had to ease our way past the upholders of the pro-abortion orthodoxy who were on guard against what they considered apostasy. No longer. While hardly a media favorite, the cause of life is making headway, aided immeasurably by talk radio, a bevy of pro-life writers and commentators, the Internet, and (if you don't mind my saying so) National Right to Life News and TN&V.

Take a glance at our benighted opposition. Misfiring on all cylinders, abortion advocates continue to tell themselves that all their movement needs is a tune-up.

In truth, the problem goes far deeper than replacing a few worn out sparkplugs, a dirty air filter, and a distributor cap and rotor. The machinery of death is wheezing and there is no extended warranty.

For most of the past 33 years we were told, "Get with it. Times have changed." But we chose not to move with the times, and as a a result the cause of unborn babies is beginning to reap the harvest.

These are immensely exciting times!

After you read this edition, please pass it on to friends or family members. And you would be doing them, and our cause, a huge favor if you give them a gift subscription.

Having been force-fed pro-abortion drivel for so many years, let them feast on the truth for a change.