And I believe potemkin organizations like National Right to Life only encourage this.
I base this not only on their hailing of the ESCR decision as a Winner compromise (albeit disappointing decision to be "forced" into) but also a conversation I had in D.C. once in the wake of the SB-30 "Parental Consent" decision in Texas.
If you pull up any of those threads, you'll see members of what David Keene likes to call "The Stupid Party" tossing their hats in the air and screaming "don't mess with Texas!" as Askel5 screams "READ THE BILL!!! READ THE BILL!!!" in the background.And ... let's face it. I'd given anything never to have to mention the name "Bush" again but there's really no getting around the fact that the Bush family has been in a position of leadership within the GOP my entire life.
In vain, I tried to point out that the bill required no such thing as parental consent and -- moreover -- fast-tracked minor abortions, provided additional protections for abortionists and codified additional privacy for the whole sordid practice. Contrary to the OUTRIGHT LIE printed in the "Dallas Morning News", there was no prison time for offending abortionists. Rather, his penalties were capped by the legislation.
All in all, a substantive win for the abortionists but a bone of Appearance, aptly named as the PATRIOT Act, thrown to the pro-life cause.
I was in DC not long later for either the Treason Rally or the House Managers Dinner and called up National Right to Life to speak to their Legislative Director. As it turned out, they were out but the Texas Legislative Director was sitting in for a fortnight. Beauty.
He was a most pleasant, intelligent young man. Catholic, I'm assuming, since he was a Thomist scholar. We talked for hours. Was I right about what I'd been arguing here at FR? You bet. In fact, I was even right in that the whole thing was geared to "make it look" as if parental consent were required. He knew as well as I the reports in the paper were, technically, misleading.
That bothered me greatly, actually. Sure, I can understand the strategy but why in the world would pro-aborts and the media end up complicit in such a strategy? They're not that stupid. Surely they knew it was a great bill. (What did it cost them to have "parent" really mean parent or guardian?) But they howled on command, even complained about the spectre of prison for abortionists and never corrected the lies printed in the Dallas Morning Herald. Case closed.
We also talked about the role of fathers.
I admitted that I would sometimes argue that -- if abortion was a "human" right as opposed to some strictly Female special right the State was peddling -- fathers should have the right to "abort" their fatherhood as long as they did so before birth, like the moms. "Don't make it worse!" he cautioned.
I knew he was right but, given that I believe fathers are the key to wresting women from the arms of the state, I kept harping on the subject.
"Bring us a case ... bring us a case," he said. I'll admit I left dejected. Clearly, in the 40 million legal abortions since 1973, there was not one father willing to go to bat for his kid. These things truly depress me.
Once I got back home, though, and started digging, I found the Loce case out of New Jersey. A young man who created a human wall with his friends trying to prevent his girlfriend from killing his child. He did take the case to court. Mother Teresa, Dr. Jerome Lejeune and several other luminaries filed amicus curiae briefs -- Dr. Lejeune even flew in from France to testify. (He's the geneticist that discovered Down's syndrome, by the way.) In the end, Loce was convicted of trespassing and the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case he brought in defense of his right to protect the life of the child he'd have gladly supported had he or she been allowed to live.
So I'm not sure what good bringing a case would be when Justice insists she's deaf, if not blind.
(Though it's true I didn't realize until I got to this place that Prescott was in politics [lost an election to the publicizing of his eugenic views in '56, I believe], that George H. Bush was a Representative and our first Ambassador to China [I thought he'd just been a CIA guy] in addition to serving two terms as Vice President and one term as President, or that Prescott Jr. was the head of our US/China Chamber of Commerce. I did know Jeb and George were governors of two rather important electoral states also key banking and customs/borders concerns.)
The fact none of the Bush men seem to abide always by their Personal Convictions (particularly W.'s stating that life begins at conception), doesn't surprise me so much. It's quite possible that, despite their being Leaders, they don't have the freedom to live out their Personal Convictions. That's the price of being popular or in the Inner Ring in highschool, even. We all know that.
Rather, what bothers me is the way they can't seem to change the hearts of their pro-abort wives. The Bush women stand as constant testament to the fact that reasonable people can disagree about something so sacred as human life.
The Bush women stand testament to the fact that after a lifetime in politics (particularly the last 30 years' polarization, Litmus Test locksteps and "political realities" centered on the abortion issue that unites the Rainbow Coalition) ... that during all those 30 years, sitting through all those political and pro-life functions ... they remained UNconvinced of the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and have dignity and the right to life from conception to natural death.
Not even the rank carnage of our abortuaries (which they'd like to see "reduced" and confined to the first trimester only) or the alienation of the sexes or the destruction of our families which ensue from our Culture of Death ... the linchpin of which is Legal Abortion ... has caused them to rethink their position on legal abortion.
So ... no. I don't believe that the leadership or the Establishment pro-life organizations are our best hope. They practically advertise the fact they cannot make a compelling argument for life to the very core of the longterm political leadership on the right ... be it their own wives or the GOP Senate who voted to reaffirm Roe during the campaign and passed the Schumer Amendment 80-17 (lest Gore get good press coverage for breaking what they assured us was going to be a tie).
I prefer organizations like American Life League or Priests for Life. The sorts of folks who will not compromise and will not be co-opted and who concentrate as much or more on the individual lives at stake and the Individual's ability to change hearts rather than work always to broad-based coalitions ... squandering their moral capital and their letter writing campaigns on useless legislation that nets no real progress.