NRL News
Page 2
October 2009
Volume 36
Issue 10

Lessons from the Past Make Present Action More Urgent
By Dave Andrusko

Historian Paul Johnson, writing a post-presidential evaluation of Bill Clinton, once observed, “His power ... lay in his capacity to edit unwelcome reality out of his life.” Such could be said of the goals of the leadership of the Democratic Party. They wish to edit out the unwelcome reality (to the American public) that health care “reform” is saturated with inducements to abort more babies and to cast the medically vulnerable into the throes of what NRLC has aptly called a “death spiral.” (See pages 1, 10, and 11.)

If the public is to be snookered, all of this has to be denied, deflected, and dismissed. Except those who watch this on a daily basis, only the thinnest edge of an enormous anti-life wedge will be visible on the surface.

But below deck—otherwise known as places such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office—left to their own devices pro-abortion leaders will mesh a variety of proposals to come up with a final bill that is sure to keep Planned Parenthood happy. That would mean conscripting the entire machinery of one-sixth of the American economy.

Our job, as always, is to stop them in their tracks. This issue of NRL News provides a number of resources to equip you to do just that. In addition there is an all-important action alert on the back cover. Please read and heed. We need your help!

It goes without saying that the Abortion Establishment would welcome at any time the generous portions of anti-life proposals the pro-abortion Democratic congressional leadership now has now heaped on its plate. But at this particular historical moment, they want these bulwarks to protect the “right” to abortion more than ever. They do because they see the same precursors to a societal-wide evaluation that we do.

To name just a couple, pro-life education, greatly assisted by modern technology, is wearing away at the foundation of the anti-life ethos. Once upon a time you had to squint when you looked at primitive black-and-white ultrasound to make out the outlines of your unborn child. Now, courtesy of four-color ultrasounds, the clarity is magnificent. The impact of seeing your child frolicking about cannot be overstated.

So, too, the impact of seeing the unspeakable violence abortion inflicts on the littlest Americans. If you really are trying to read the signs of the times, ask yourself if you could ever have thought in your wildest imagination that the New York Times would run a photo essay on its web page that included four photos of aborted babies. But it did, on October 9. (Read all about it in Today’s News & Views at www.nrlc.org)

Think about this as well for a second. Once upon a time the aural wallpaper of all young people was the pro-abortion mantra of “choice,” “blobs of tissue,” and the like. Hollow, but effective because largely unchallenged. Now they hear competing life-affirming sounds, which resonate in a way that was not possible even a decade ago.

I believe (as Lincoln did of slavery) that if you arrest the spread of abortion, you put it on the course of eventual extinction. The reverse is no less true. Thus the enormous significance of the fight over health care “reform.”

Returning to former pro-abortion President Clinton one more time, after he had his head handed to him in the first off-year elections following his 1992 victory, he was often accused of practicing “small-bore” politics. By this was meant Clinton went from shooting for the moon (which resulted in shooting himself in the foot) to less grandiose objectives.

But that never stopped him from crusading to expand and export abortion even while he piously insisted his goal was to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” Making abortion “rare” included making abortion a key part of his (and Hillary Clinton’s) health care reform. Anyone with eyes to see learned their lesson.

So as we cut to 2009, what do we see? We have another colossal attempt to re-engineer the health care system. Despite public statements by pro-abortion President Obama that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion,” all of the major bills under consideration would put the federal government into the business of subsidizing elective abortion on a huge scale—a drastic break from long-standing federal policy. As NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson has said, “Every committee-approved health care bill would insert multiple pro-abortion programs and mechanisms into federal law. President Obama is trying to deliver on his promises to Planned Parenthood, at the same time he conceals his intent with misleading public statements.”

Indeed, President Obama is pushing hard. This is not surprising: Obama is even tighter with Planned Parenthood than the Clintons were.

This is taking place at the very same time--as demonstrated by the very encouraging results of a recent Pew poll-- that the American public is becoming increasingly pro-life. (See pages 3, 8-9.) It is our job to make sure that Americans know that Obama and his fellow pro-abortion Democrats are determined to collaborate with the Abortion Establishment to ensure the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade.

That is the magnitude of what is at stake. Be sure to go to the back cover, and use the information cited there to contact Congress. And do so, please, today!