The American Spectator

Political Hay

Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups are demanding that Karen Hughes, an adviser to President Bush, apologize for saying on CNN last Sunday that the "fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life." Hughes's remark was "cynical, ugly, and mean-spirited," said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel said that "Hughes compared the 9/11 terrorists to Americans who marched on the mall." (Actually she did not; she was responding to Wolf Blitzer's question about how big an issue abortion would be in this year's election.)

By taking offense at a comment not directed at them, advocates of abortion stumbled into associating themselves with terrorists. The Smeals and the Engels reveal themselves in their wild charge against Hughes.

Unable to leave well enough alone, they demand an apology for a comparison to terrorists not made until they opened their mouths and formed an association that invites the public to ponder the casualty counts of the abortion industry.

If anyone should demand an apology after Sunday's hideous march for abortion, it is the Bush administration. Have the sponsoring organizations of the "March for Women's Lives" apologized for the placards saying Barbara Bush should have had President Bush killed in her womb?

On Fox's Hannity and Colmes this week, Sean Hannity asked Patricia Ireland, former head of the National Organization for Women, about the placards reported in "Among the Pagan Ladies" on Monday. Hannity: "They were holding up signs, 'If only Barbara Bush had a choice.' 'Barbara chose poorly,' was another one. 'The Pope's mother had no choice.'"

Ireland didn't apologize for the placards. She just rationalized them: "You do understand, Sean, that that was a small minority of signs."

Hannity: "Well, why aren't you condemning it?"

Ireland: "There is a deep anger."

Rarely do American marches showcase such straightforward messages about a missed chance at murdering a president. But Ireland can casually chalk this up to "deep anger" -- in other words, righteous indignation into which abortion advocates have been provoked by Bush's "anti-choice" policies.

Railing at Karen Hughes, Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood, said, "It is outrageous to suggest that those of us who challenge this administration's attacks on reproductive rights and access do not value life and human dignity."

No, it is not. Examine the words of abortion advocates. In a cheerleading column after the march, Molly Ivins justified third-trimester abortions of "damaged" children.

"If you know you are going to bear a child that is disastrously deformed (which you still can't find out until about the fifth month), who decides?" writes Ivins. "I don't mean to be unkind, but the burden of caring for a damaged child is not only known to break up marriages, but frequently to have an unhappy effect on the other children as well. (Not always, I grant you.) But frankly, so much of it has to do with whether there is enough money to care for the damaged child."

Let's add Ivins's reasoning up: If the marriage is strong and prosperous, the "damaged" child gets to live; if the marriage is tottering and short of cash, the child can be killed. Unbelievable.

This was the sick calculus on display at Sunday's march, where marchers starkly spoke of "wanted" and "chosen" children, the upshot of which is that unwanted and unchosen children be aborted. During one moment in the march, the emcee appeared to announce a "missing child" in the audience. Was the child lost or unwanted? Many children were missing at the march, and marchers were doing their best to brainwash women into not missing them. The children enlisted into propaganda service at the march were mere survivors, utterly random recipients of life in a culture otherwise prepared to abort them had they proven "damaged" or inconvenient.

"Pregnant women for choice flecked the crowd, marching for their unborn sons and daughters," rhapsodized Ivins after the march. They marched not to abort their unborn sons and daughters but to give them a chance to abort theirs? The thought of the abortion advocates gets more and more tortured.

There is a good reason that they see themselves in Karen Hughes's condemnation of the 9/11 terrorists. They have made America a dangerous place for children. But Hughes didn't accuse them of damaging the country like the terrorists. She didn't have to.

topics:
Abortion