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NRL News
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Inconvenient Truth Editor’s note. This month’s guest column is written by Karen Cross, National Right to Life Political Director Mark Twain is among my all-time favorite writers. Whether we are aware of these aphorisms or not, they are crucial to the manner in which our Movement conducts its noble business: “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything,” Twain wrote. And “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” For us the two really go hand-in-hand. For over 35 years pro-lifers from Maine to California, from Florida to Washington have stood together, the ultimate movement for social justice of our time. Their solidarity on behalf of unborn babies rests on a rock-solid foundation of truth. Abortion not only kills a defenseless unborn child, the ripple effects of her death can permanently disrupt the lives of all who have played a role in her destruction. If ever there was an inconvenient truth, this qualifies. This truism is highlighted every four years when our great nation selects its President. The choice has been clear since 1980. It is starkly clear—dramatically clear—in 2008. It’s clear to us, because we take the time to study the records of the presidential rivals and their running mates. It is not clear, however, to many Americans who have been lulled into thinking that pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama is a likeable enough fellow who would love to “reduce” the number of abortions. He’s told us that on occasion and his surrogates have made the same point repeatedly. But his words do not match his actions or his promises. Sen. Obama shares with Planned Parenthood and NARAL and NOW a particular vision of the world. And that vision is that life is for the perfect and, most of all, the planned. All you needed to know about Sen. Obama came when, speaking of his two young daughters, he said, “ if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.” For the organizations Obama runs with—whatever they say otherwise—there are never enough abortions. Never. If Obama wants their support, he must act. That’s why Obama is a co-sponsor of the “Freedom of Choice Act,” a piece of legislation designed to bulldoze whatever protections people of good will have been able to enact. With one stroke of a president’s pen, FOCA would overturn such pro-life legislation as women’s right to know, waiting periods, and parental notification. Our tax dollars would pay for abortions and partial-birth abortion would be legal once more. Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Council last year, “The first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.” If you pass legislation to obliterate every commonsense legislative limitation (and appoint enough Harry Blackmun clones to the Supreme Court), you can virtually guarantee that the sizeable decrease in the number of abortions since 2000 will stop, and begin to increase. The contrast with pro-life Sen. John McCain and his pro-life running mate Gov. Sarah Palin could not be more stark. McCain has a 25-year pro-life voting record. He and his wife, Cindy, are the parents of an adopted daughter. McCain (as he said in a video presentation to NRLC 2008) is “proud to stand with you in defending the sanctity of human life, and in supporting mothers and children, under the most challenging of circumstances.” Sarah Palin—well, you all know about Gov. Palin. How she learned that her unborn son, Trig, would have Down syndrome and took the path so seldom taken these days: she and her husband, Todd, treated their fifth child as the gift from God that he was. When their daughter unexpectedly became pregnant, Sarah and Todd stood behind her 100 percent. Theirs is an altogether different vision from Sen. Obama’s. There is room for the “imperfect” and the unplanned. For after all, not only are we all imperfect in our own way, the depth of our humanity is often measured by our willingness to grapple lovingly with the unexpected. Both McCain and Palin have walked the walk. |