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NRL News
Obama’s
Pro-Abortion Marching Orders Reproductive health is one of the most politically perilous issues any new administration has to deal with. But there’s some good news on this front for President-elect Obama: He may face lower expectations from abortion-rights backers than some of his predecessors.” Introduction to “Advocates Want Bush Abortion Policies Reversed,” a piece by Julie Rovner that aired December 11 on NPR’s “All Things Considered” “What advocates were less eager to share with the public is the detailed roadmap included in the document for the changes in policy needed to improve reproductive health for women both here and abroad. Several advocates cited concerns that the administration would be criticized as doing the bidding of reproductive health community if it made use of the specific legal reasoning outlined in the document.” From Emily Douglas’s December 11 blog entry on the pro-abortion web site Rhrealitycheck.org, alluding to a 55-page wish list submitted to the Obama transition team by an alliance of PPFA, NARAL, and about 50 other pro-abortion groups. Apparently, the coalition did not expect the Obama team to post their grab bag online. (For more, see second editorial and story page 1.) Many of us of a certain age love Mark Twain. It’s not so much that we remember much of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, which we read in middle school, as it is that we recall the delightful aphorisms that have made us laugh over the years. Among my favorites is, “History doesn’t repeat itself—at best it sometimes rhymes.” Well, when we compare Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, it’s hard to miss the rhymes: young, charismatic, handsome, a gift for gab, and successful at packaging himself as a kind of middle-of-the-roader with whom opponents can “make a deal.” We forget—or at least I tend to forget—how brilliantly the former President packaged himself as that kind of candidate. (He came by the moniker “Slick Willie” honestly.) Clinton advertised himself as a “moderate,” came into office and got himself into big trouble by veering left, and then, under immense pressure (and the impact of a disastrous defeat in the 1994 off-year elections) nominally moved back toward the center. He won re-election in 1996. The early conventional wisdom is that President-elect Obama seems intent on avoiding obvious confrontations right out of the box, or at least is shrewd enough to recall how Clinton built his own political land mines and then stepped on them. We shall see if Obama’s timing is better and, whether it is or not, if the American people remained duped or get wise. What we do know is that, for whatever assortment of reasons, there are many millions of people who are determined not only to give Obama the benefit of the doubt but also to “willfully suspend disbelief”—the theater term which refers to the audience’s willingness to put on hold the knowledge that the situation is not real. Forget the hard-core anti-life characters Obama hangs out with or the way he tickled their fancy with such promises as making the signing of the lamentably mislabeled “Freedom of Choice Act” his first action as President. That’s the crowd he runs with. But it seems as if nothing he can say or do, promise to promote or to destroy, makes a difference. People want to believe Obama will find “common ground” and that he genuinely wishes to “reduce the number of abortions.” Take a moment to read the story on page 18. As I read the good news of the impact of pro-life policies, I thought of that memorable line in A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge asks the Spirit of Christmas Present whether Tiny Tim will live. “I see an empty place at this table. I see a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, the child will die.” Had the shadows remained unaltered—if the abortion rate and ratio had not fallen dramatically (thanks in large measure to the very policies Obama opposes)—upwards of nine million more lives would have been lost. Anyone with ears to hear knows that everything about Obama screams out that he cares not a twit about reducing the number of abortions. You can’t oppose parental involvement laws, the Hyde Amendment, and women’s right to know laws, on the one hand, and be in favor of integrating abortion into a national health care program and passing the radically pro-abortion “Freedom of Choice Act,” on the other hand, and not know that millions of more babies will die. The other editorial that begins on page two talks about all the resources this special edition brings to help you help us help the babies and thwart the Obama Abortion Agenda. That anti-life program is as wide as it is lethal, as deep as it is deceptive, and as encompassing as his assurances are bogus. Please read that and all the other first-rate stories in this edition. Let me close with two other Twain quotes. First, with respect to your assistance in stopping Obama, “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.” I am fully confident you will not merely talk about fighting Obama but will go all-out to help the Movement defeat the plans of the most pro-abortion President ever. Second, as regards our soon-to-be 44th President, who I predict will sooner or later regret his (to be gentle) total lack of candor, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” |