NRL News
Page 15
June 2010
Volume 37
Issue 8-9

NRLC 2010: About as Good as it Gets

BY Dave Andrusko

Early and often, throughout the three-day NRLC 2010 convention held in Pittsburgh, I heard some of the same words and descriptors: “amazing,” “one of the best ever,” “buzz,” and “where is the convention next year?” [Hint: Jacksonville, Florida. See page 14.]

What explains what was clearly one of the best-received conventions in recent memory? For starters, the location. Pennsylvania is pro-life country.

And then there was the quality of the general sessions, both in the sense of topics that people thirsted to learn more about and quality speakers who could deliver information in a way that the audience could quickly assimilate, profit from, and be able to share with folks back home.

To name just a few: Dr. Steve Zelinski on “The Pain of the Unborn”; Steven Mosher on sex-selection abortions; Dr. Angela Franks on Margaret Sanger’s eugenic legacy; the 25th anniversary of National Teens for Life; a riveting account of a much-regretted abortion by Mark and LaRee Pickup; a crystal-clear explanation of ObamaCare presented by NRLC’s Douglas Johnson and Burke Balch; a leadership award given to pro-life House Republican Leader John Boehner; and the immensely inspirational Monsignor James Lisante, whose speech closed the convention at the Saturday night banquet.

There were several narratives running throughout our time together.

First and foremost, in spite of Barack Obama and the pro-abortion Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, there is real reason for optimism. NRLC Executive Director David N. O’Steen, Ph.D., used a portion of the Saturday morning general session to make three points:

1. “Today in America, the normal is to be pro-life. More people identify as pro-life than pro-choice,” he said.

2. 61% of the public does not want government health care providing any funding for abortion.

3. “To answer a question from 2008, yes, we have hope,” O’Steen said. “And we will remember in November.”

Second, the fractures in the wall that has separated Americans from their consciences grow more pronounced almost daily. Once almost invisible, images of the unborn child can be found attached to refrigerators all over the country. It’s impossible to square four-color real-time ultrasounds of squirming unborn babies with nonsense about “blobs of tissue.”

In the same vein, if a pro-abortionist had snuck in while Steven Mosher talked about the horrific practice of sex-selection abortion, how would she/he merge support for “women’s rights” with the systematic annihilation of unborn baby girls?

Adding to the cognitive dissonance, even for the hardest-hearted pro-abortionist, can they really accept that it okay to tear apart unborn children who are capable of experiencing pain? That is the challenge posed by Nebraska’s “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”

Pro-abortionists no doubt felt better when a working group of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists ponied up a bogus study purporting to prove that the unborn child can’t experience pain at even at 24 weeks, let alone at 20 weeks, and perhaps not until considerably further along. (For the definitive rebuttal, see pages 12-13.)

But I strongly suspect that they fear if the Supreme Court hears the evidence, the justices will uphold Nebraska’s landmark legislation.

A tremendous convention, from start to finish. Please be sure to order CDs from the convention. They are as inexpensive as they are comprehensive. (See pages 20-21.)

See you in Jacksonville, Florida, next year.