A Rendezvous With Destiny.(Editorial)

In the 21+ years I've edited National Right to Life News, I can not think of a single edition in which we covered as many stories of comparable gravity as those discussed in this issue. We examine threats to our collective humanity which are so dangerous that, if allowed to carry the day, threaten to detach us from our moorings. We are, in a word, at the epicenter of a moral and ethical earthquake.

I will use this space to focus on partial-birth abortion and cloning. But that in no way diminishes the urgency of a host of other vitally important stories.

Take just one, Miguel Estrada, nominated by President Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Senate Democrats, cranking up their old but still finely tuned propaganda machine, are filibustering the nomination of the first Hispanic to this court.

Why? Because Estrada refuses to commit to supporting abortion. This is widely seen as a test run for torpedoing any and all highly qualified judicial candidates should they fail the litmus test established by NARAL and the pro-abortion Democratic Senate leadership.

And what exactly is it that those delightful folks seek to protect? For one thing, partial-birth abortion. Why single that out? Whatever the abortion "technique" employed, doesn't it extinguish the life of a young member of the human family in a bloody, vicious, and vile manner?

Partial-birth abortion is different because, thanks to National Right to Life, the cruelty endemic to all abortions was brought out of the shadows and into the light. Congress has twice passed a ban on this ghastly attack only to be vetoed by President Clinton. But in reviewing a state ban the U.S. Supreme Court said that such unholy violence is constitutionally protected.

We must stand idly by, the Court said, while abortionists jam surgical scissors into the skulls of babies 20-26 weeks old (and older) and suction out their brains. This brutal attack is all the more shocking for it is launched against babies whose bodies the abortionist has largely removed from the mothers' bodies.