WAILING FROM THE PRO-ABORTION IVORY TOWERS.

By now most pro-lifers will have learned that on April 18, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. In 1992, Dr. Martin Haskell presented this horrific abortion method to a meeting of fellow abortionists. NRLC's incomparable Douglas Johnson got a copy of Haskell's step-by-step instructional paperand, as they say, "the rest is history." But remember this history amounted to fourteen years of hard work and an enormous expenditure of money before partial-birth abortions were finally banned. Along the way, we suffered setbacks in the form of two vetoes by Bill Clinton, a hostile main-stream press, a barrage of lies by the abortion pressure groups, and a multitude of adverse court decisions.

The Supreme Court's latest decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, does not abolish a woman's so-called "constitutional right" to an abortion. It only upholds the congressional ban on one specific abortion method. Yet, the abortionists' and pro-abortionists' reaction to the Court decision goes beyond the expected (namely, fund appeals and exhortations to retake the White House in 2008): there is a sense of betrayal and cold fury.

First, the Court had given them an invaluable gift by inventing a "constitutional right" to abortion. Then, for 34 years, the Court had been providing abortionists with a free-fire zone, declaring all sorts of abortion regulations unconsti-tutional "on the face of it" because they did not contain all-purpose "health" exceptions to the Court's liking.

But beyond these legal milestones, there had been something deeply satisfying to the "enlightened" pro-abortionists: the Supreme Court's pro-abortion majorities had accepted the language and world view of this new ideology. Killing her unborn child was not only a mother's right, it was "central" to her becoming a full human being. Abortionists, once considered low criminals, were now professionals nobly serving women. And killing ("according to the best judgment of her physician") was done to advance "health."

Clearly, the Supreme Court's pro-abortion majority had been light years ahead of the stupid, church-going, right-wing-nuts voting pro-life. With its Stenberg v. Carhart decision of 2000, the progressive Court majority had told those people in Nebraska to take their partial-birth abortion ban and forget about it. Like a beacon, the Court had been projecting sheer enlightenment through the country, creating quite a few "penumbras," to be sure.

And now WHAT is in Gonzales v. Carhart? "Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child"? The government has "legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn"? "It was reasonable for Congress to think that partial-birth abortion 'undermines the public's perception of the appropriate role of a physician during the delivery process, and perverts a process during which life is brought into the world'"? And "the law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice, nor should it elevate their status above other physicians in the medical community"?

It is time for progressive minds to become unhinged.