I'm very grateful for the kind responses to my
initial reactions to President Obama's speech at Notre Dame university. I had started that blog by saying that I would be posting a more extensive reflection on the speech, but I've since read an
excellent reflection by Dave Andrusko of National Right to Life. Dave says what I'd like to have said (and more), so please read his column in full. Below are some extracts:
"[W]e're told by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, 'Obama's opponents seek to reignite the culture wars. He doesn't.'... How in the world can someone possibly come to that conclusion, at least with respect to abortion? Simple. They are talking about Obama's soaring rhetoric. If they can convince you (and themselves!) to look up toward the clouds, you'll never notice the grim, anti-life details of his policy proposals on the ground.
"[P]ro-life critics of Obama...cite chapter and verse what he has done already (e.g. [revoking the] Mexico City [policy]); what he has steadfastly insisted he will do; and what he is already inkling he will do. With that evidence in hand, they reach the only conclusion anyone whose head is not in the clouds could come to: this is [Planned Parenthood's] heartthrob.
"[W]hatever short-term gains there undoubtedly were for Obama, long-term the only way pro-lifers could have lost would have been had they remained mute at the travesty of the most pro-abortion President in our history being honored by the best known Catholic University in our country. For now the winds remain at Obama's back. But they won't always."
