A Voice That Will Not Be Silenced.(delgates at a pro-life conference affirm their commitment)

"We know that these challenges can be overcome, because history moves in the direction of justice. The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged for centuries. Yet, eventually, the human heart would not abide them. There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not be silenced--what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. ... This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us."

Conclusion of remarks delivered July 8 by President Bush on Goree Island, Senegal

On my best day as a writer I would be hard pressed to come close to conveying how great was the 31st annual NRL Convention. What made the three-day gathering so extraordinary is difficult to pinpoint. In some real sense, you "had to be there." But let me try.

One way of describing what took place was that there was a kind of poetry at work. I don't mean by that only the eloquent language that filled 64 workshops, four general sessions, a prayer breakfast, and a closing banquet. The 1,000+ attendees, it seems to me, were stirred by something that transcended mere eloquence.

Robert Frost once wrote, "A complete poem is where the emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words." A fusion of emotions, ideas, language--the complete package--was evident in abundance in St. Louis July 3-5.

NRLC President Wanda Franz, Ph.D., caught the spirit of the moment, giving wings to a convention that never touched ground. In her opening remarks, she spoke of our misbegotten Supreme Court.

Ah yes, the Supreme Court. It is altogether fitting, after 30 years of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, that we meet in St. Louis to advance the right to life. It is here in St. Louis at the historic Old Courthouse where another case started which the Supreme Court decided wrongly with most devastating consequences. I am of course talking of the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford of 1857. I have not the slightest doubt that in due time Roe v. Wade will be listed with Dred Scott v. Sanford among the most horrendous judicial failures. These failures represent not just the usual spots and blemishes any human institution collects on its garments over the course of history; these stains come from the tears of the oppressed and the blood of the innocent. They represent injustices that must be set right.