Capitol Ideas / Lost Continence
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS LOST CONTINENCE by Tom Bethell Oomewhere around the National Archives building on Pennsylvania Avenue I joined the March for Life, now in its eighth year. I was happy to be with...
...If you believe that each one of these abortions was murder, then it follows that abortion is by far the most serious public policy issue of our time...
...Someone should have told Carter that a number of the presidents before Lincoln were ' 'personally opposed" to slavery...
...And this should not be brought under the perspective of religion.'' I went in search of a drink and encountered Joseph F. O'Rourke III who was dressed like a traditional clergyman, with dog collar, and he was holding forth airily to a circle of mostly female admirers...
...Particularly worrisome to Planned Parenthood is the possibility that their federal funds (under Title X of the Public Health Services Act) will be cut off...
...What is striking here, of course, is the tremendous moral disparity between these two positions...
...But he was afraid doing so would lose him votes...
...Liberals know this, and it is the superior zealotry of their foes that they fear most...
...He undid the top button of his shirt, and lit a cigarette, transforming himself into a civilian...
...That would make martyrs of them," Joan Vayo told me in an aside...
...Reagan Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington editor and a Washington editor of Harper's...
...These were health care professionals, National Health Council, Health Planning this that and the other: functionaries of the "health care delivery system...
...First, however, rights must be asserted, plans promulgated, the public educated, and the government made to pay the bill...
...On the other hand I hesitate to second-guess Nellie Gray's tactics...
...How do the rival sentiments match up...
...There are many things for which it used to be automatic-speaking out in favor of abortion, for example- but now they never do...
...He lost anyway, and yet several million unborn infants were aborted during his appalling presidency...
...And munching egg rolls...
...At the same time, they have abandoned the moral high-ground that they so confidently occupied during Vietnam and Watergate...
...I was happy to be with them, too...
...Someone introduced me to Faye Wattleton, a tall and glamorous 37-year-old...
...O'Rourke called for another vodka...
...It will be surprising, then, if the liberals don't sooner or later cut their losses and get out...
...She became a martyr.'' But her celebrity was short-lived...
...I was a Jesuit for 20 years," O'Rourke explained, "and was thrown out for baptizing a child whose mother believed in free choice...
...In which case he should have done something to stop it...
...Gray, the march organizer, to mention this because it was predictable that the media would amplify it into one more conflict, carrying the subliminal message to viewers...
...And here they were-"networking...
...The invitation read: "The Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of America cordially invites you to a reception to launch the Federation's 1981 Public Impact program...
...But in her position I would have simply said that Reagan had invited the anti-abortion leaders to see him inside the White House after the march...
...On the other hand, the pro-abortionist believes-what...
...There's no way...
...Today he was a spokesman for "Catholics For A Free Choice," up-to-date clerics who had held a press conference in opposition to the March for Life...
...They will only say they are "pro-choice...
...Cigarette in one hand, vodka and ice in the other, half-moon glasses balanced precariously on the tip of his nose, the Reverend O'Rourke seemed pleased with life and his role in it: media trendy, forever on TV quarrelling with the Pope, his position somehow legitimized by the Fairness Doctrine...
...The impartial legislator is therefore likely to feel a far more intense pressure from the anti-abortionists...
...Apparently this abortion thing is serious for the Church," he said...
...The fundamental principles of individual privacy and justice are under the most serious assault since the days of McCarthyism . . . self righteous minority...
...What is the balance of outrage over abortion...
...This paid tribute to the role that membership plays in authorizing one to define or change an organization's teachings...
...We can't repudiate others because they don't conform to our perception of what their behavior should be...
...Hi, gorgeous," he said to a Planned Parenthood female functionary, who had come over for a chat...
...Some people want to stamp out sexuality, which is very much a part of us...
...He was defrocked," said a voice at my elbow, a Capitol Hill aide named Joan Vayo who was wearing a March for Life rose and had come to take a look at Planned Parenthood...
...It is worth considering the political implications of this, which I had the opportunity to do as the march ended and I made my way inside the Russell Office Building, where hordes of marchers were hammering on the doors and patrolling the corridors in search of their senators, some of whom I suppose had gone into hiding for the day...
...Among the forest of placards carried by the long line of marchers (50-60,000 according to the published estimates, 100,000 according to march organizers) I noticed one that Herrick might have written: Some Babies Die By Chance But None Should Die By Choice The good weather that arrived on schedule for President Reagan's inauguration had stayed on for a day or two, although Reagan himself did not come out of the White House to speak to the crowd of abortion-protestors gathered on the Ellipse...
...That evening, in another part of town, there was a cocktail party...
...But does this mean that "unwanted" babies are better off dead...
...above all, no messy patients to disturb one's peace of mind...
...They don't want to hear that horrible word...
...This conference marks the opening move in our year-long agenda to counter those who view the 1980 election results as their mandate to limit freedom in America," said Faye Wattleton, Planned Parenthood president, in a press release available at the door...
...Some people simply don't know the facts of reality in the real world," Faye said when I brought up the voluntary nature of pregnancy...
...The one part of Nellie Gray's speech the television producers seemed to like was the moment when she said that Reagan had been invited but had not shown up...
...Most people in the right-to-life movement, of course, do indeed regard abortion as murder...
...People do find themselves pregnant...
...When the Pope visited America in 1979, NBC gave O'Rourke 30 seconds to attack him without even pointing out that "Father" O'Rourke was no longer a priest in good standing...
...There's no earthly reason-perhaps there's a heavenly one but I'm not in touch with that evidence-why the Church shouldn't change its position on abortion...
...In a recent article on Johnson, the Washington Post inflated the conflict between her and the Mormon Church by saying she was only "technically" not a member...
...If you aren't in it, you can hardly alter its by-laws...
...It turned out to be nothing more than his calling card, neatly folded in half, and inserted between the wings of his black shirt collar...
...So he may be unmartyred...
...Suddenly he flipped the clerical collar out of his shirt...
...How can you become morally indignant defending dilatation and curettage...
...And that doesn't mean delivering babies, believe me...
...It may have been a mistake on the part of Mrs...
...Most people had gone by this time...
...Because of this great disparity of conviction-because the anti-abortionists strongly believe in their position and are zealous in promoting it...
...They become involved in a relationship that results in sexual expression...
...They always back down...
...No matter how outnumbered, zealots always prevail over the half-hearted...
...And, as with abortion, one of the reasons they didn't do anything about it was the oft-heard doubt whether slaves were "fully human...
...This of course was more than the little weasel Jimmy Carter had ever been able to bring himself to do, despite his much advertised religiosity...
...The guards at the doors, for reasons having to do with "fire hazards," were only admitting 50 marchers at a time...
...the anti-aborton people persist in being unrealistic...
...Carter, quite despicably in my view, confined himself throughout his presidency to the observation that he was "personally opposed" to abortion...
...But he has certainly played a role in muddying the doctrinal waters...
...The bishops don't excommunicate any more," he said...
...To what conflicting pressure is the impartial legislator exposed...
...It means having a desk job, a secretary and a file clerk, a decent salary deriving one way or another from the taxpayers, going to cocktail parties and talking about "the caring professions...
...It is hardly necessary to say that abortion is one of the great issues of our time, perhaps in truth dwarfing all others...
...She seems to know what she is doing...
...sobers up, confronts reality...
...O'Rourke told me that he still says mass...
...Look at what happened to Sonia Johnson when the Mormons excommunicated her...
...One of the guards told me that there were far more marchers coming to lobby this year than ever before...
...I have talked to people who wish they had not been born, because they felt they were not wanted," she replied, adding: "I might point out that the unborn do not have civil liberties under our government...
...whereas the pro-abortionists know that in the end they are only propping up promiscuity-it follows that the anti-abortion people are bound to win this battle in the long run...
...Since pregnancy is not compulsory, and can be avoided by continence, it follows that the pro-abortionist merely believes that those who are sexually promiscuous should not have to accept responsibility for their behavior...
...There was some talk of polls, with the implication that what was formerly regarded as true ceases to be when majorities express a contrary view...
...Flippancy was his forte...
...The tradition has been criticized from top to bottom...
...That is why, it seems to me, liberals have made an almost unbelievable mistake, in purely political terms (let alone moral, of course), in coming to the rescue of the pro-abortion position...
...He hasn't been excommunicated...
...Otherwise more and more of them will be dragged down to defeat by the terrible millstone of dead fetuses...
...She spoke to a Congressman briefly and then expained: "It is our desire that no pregnancy be unwanted...
...In every other area of social policy the Catholic bishops have changed...
...Planned Parenthood is a 65-year-old organization started by Margaret Sanger and based on the socialist premise that if only the dreams of planners can be enforced, then the future can be controlled, risk and spontaneity abolished, providence preempted, evil eliminated, and Utopia finally grasped...
...A crowd of well-dressed people, drinking cocktails and nibbling egg rolls dipped in sweet and hot sauce, was gathered in the Monroe Room of the Hilton Hotel...
...It is estimated that ten million abortions have been carried out in the United States since the Supreme Court's 1973 decision...
...In 1979 Planned Parenthood income was $140 million, half of which came from government contracts, reimbursements, and grants...
...On the one hand, the anti-abortionist believes that abortion is murder...
...imposing their view of morality . . . fear, ignorance, intimidation...
...But if you are, your arguments must thereby gain a degree of legitimacy...
...How does he feel about it now, I wonder...
...Pro-abortionists don't even believe in their own position, when you come right down to it...
Vol. 14 • March 1981 • No. 3
