EDITORIALS; A Badge of Honor.(abortion law)

In years to come, I strongly suspect historians will look back on these past few months and conclude that the rancorous debate over abortion, unbeknownst, turned a corner. An overly optimistic, even silly assessment, you ask, an example of the wish being father to the deed?

I grant you few pro-lifers are routinely more optimistic than I am. Having conceded that, I would argue that there are signs aplenty that the once frozen abortion debate has developed serious cracks.

Let me move back a step. It is almost impossible to exaggerate how passionately pro-abortionists believe in the slippery slope. They are utterly convinced that if they give those crazy pro-lifers an inch, the whole house of cards (to switch metaphors) will collapse.

Pro-lifers, including me on occasion, are wont to dismiss this as little more than tiresome, fundraising rant. However, I have come to see that they are on to something profoundly important.

As it happens I received a call this morning from an old friend. Prof. William Brennan is the author of three outstanding, must-read books: The Abortion Holocaust: Today's Final Solution; Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives; and Medical Holocausts: Exterminative Medicine in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America.

The common theme, the common denominator, of his life-long work is the power of language to dehumanize vulnerable categories of human beings. Stripped of their humanity, they were left to the tender mercies of those who consider them less than cattle.

He called to graciously congratulate NRL News and Today's News & Views for outstanding coverage of partial-birth abortion. (The real credit goes to NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, whose encyclopedic knowledge and 24/7 workload are the primary reasons the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act passed over deeply entrenched opposition in Congress, especially among pro-abortion Democrats.)