EDITORIALS; Phony Overtures.(Editorial)

How one responds to Sen. Hillary Clinton's supposed "overtures" to pro-lifers is a real Rorschach-test moment. The junior senator from New York tells us she is seeking "common ground."

The most militant pro-abortionists fret that she's softening. (Fat chance of that!) More politically astute pro-abortion types know it's all speed and no altitude, and silently applaud her meaningless overtures to pro-lifers.

Pro-lifers simply say, "Where have we heard this before?" About a million times since last November when Democrats paid the price for their by-the-numbers pro-abortion position.

You have to wonder how many commentators actually read Sen. Clinton's January 24 speech given before a large crowd of New York state family planning providers. It's a doozy.

Clinton establishes the parameters right out of the box. You have on the one side pre-democratic Romania, led by "a Soviet style Communist dictator" who "outlawed abortions," she said.

On the "other side of the world and the opposite side of this debate," there's Communist China. "After you had your one allotted child," Clinton said, "in some parts of China, you could be sterilized against your will or forced to have an abortion."

In either case, in Eastern Europe or in the far East, it's an abridgement of freedom - - coerced to have children, coerced not to have children. What's that got to do with abortion and President Bush?