This may feel like déjà vu. The Senate has passed a ban on partial birth abortion before but Bill Clinton was president and vetoed it twice. Now that both the Senate and the House can pass it, and the president has asked for it, it should be relatively smooth sailing. This is an issue that gets beyond the usual abortion-debate divide: Even stalwart defenders of "choice" have realized that partial-birth abortion is infanticide.
In the thirty years since "Roe v. Wade", science and technology have continued their forward march. Ultrasound has advanced from the grainy black and white shadows of yesteryear to movies in living color. Little wonder that obstetricians are increasingly reluctant to perform abortions. Who, after all, could consider a fetus as life unworthy of living, once they've held its hand?
The manipulation of language has long been one of the hallmarks of the pro-choice position. But with ultrasound, words no longer matter so much: The abstract melts into the concrete and the personal. This powerful emotional appeal will continue to grow as 3-D ultrasound enters the mainstream.
I wish every woman who has ever suffered an abortion would come to know Dorothy Day. Her story was so typical.
A Harvard University student was ecstatic about the publication circulating on campus last year. Four thousand five hundred copies of a 28-page tabloid, entitled LoveMatters.com, had been distributed, spreading a pro-life, pro-chastity message. It created a campus wide discussion and a flurry of chatter on Harvard's online bulletin board.
The Bible clearly teaches that abortion is wrong. This teaching comes across in many ways and for many reasons. Some people point out that the word "abortion" is not in the Bible, and that is true. Nevertheless, the teaching about abortion is there.
The President of Feminists for Life argues that the early American Feminists were unanimous in their opposition to abortion, which they viewed as a tool of male oppression. True feminism, then and now would never force women to choose between a career and a child.
At this point in the "debate" over abortion, it is patently obvious that any justification given by pro-abortion advocates to continue our society's practice of butchering its young is neither valid nor sensible.
I hope a reader can show me where I've gone astray in the sequence steps that constitute this argument against abortion. I honestly wish a pro-choicer would someday show me one argument that proved that fetuses are not persons.
The National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C, February 5, 1994. Before the President and Mrs. Clinton, Vice President and Mrs. Gore, and a room packed with 4,000 others, Mother Theresa dared to say what no one there dared to say.
