Introduction

JUST BACK FROM ENGLAND, our intrepid colleague William Murchison somehow managed to convey breathlessness in his fax: What did we want him to do? He knew he was already late with his promised article, but covering the Lambeth Conference of Bishops representing the "worldwide Anglican Communion" in Canterbury had proved to be a bigger story than he'd imagined, he had to write about that too, while it was fresh. Could we give him something specific to write about to concentrate his attention? He'd get right on it.

We were delighted to hear it all: "Write away," we answered back, "and right away on Lambeth!" Our readers would certainly enjoy a first-hand report of what may well have been an historic turning point in the course of "Western morality"? True, the decisive wedge in the Lambeth Palace debates was homosexuality, not "our" abortion issue, but "Gay Rights" have become an integral part of the moral revolution that includes the "right" to kill preborn humans; defeat for the grotesquelymisnamed "Gays" at Lambeth was a counter-revolutionary victory for our side. We couldn't resist suggesting a title ("The Lambeth Squawk"), the enthusiasm was catching. (Alas, our youthful readers may not know that The Lambeth Walk was a famous ballroom dance craze in 1930's England.)

And it is a good story, perfectly suited for Murchison's verbal gusto, so you are in for a treat. You need not be an Anglican to enjoy it: the brimming-with-irony plot is that-when the British Empire dominated the Third World-the Church of England was a "world religion" that sent true-believing missionaries to convert the "natives" in Africa and Asia, which they did so well that their fruits (personified by hundreds of "non-white" Bishops at Canterbury) have come back to reject the . er, fruits of the "Modernism" that has withered white Anglicanism.

But enough: we're enthusiastic because of course we've already read Murchison's spanking good story, now it's your turn to savor it all. And the title we actually used ("The Bible Tells Us No") is more than a pun: those diligent missionaries "sold" the Good Book, which does indeed condemn homosexual practice as an "abomination"-their converts merely voted for that Old Time Religion.

Alas, Mr. Murchison's class act is a hard one to follow; however, we've managed to provide another strong dose of irony, albeit sans the fun. Mr. Wesley Smith, Esquire, writes about another "current event" that by no means got the attention it deserved from our Major Media (but then what did during Monica Mania?). What happened was, Geoffrey Fieger, whose sole claim to "fame" is that he is Jack "Dr. Death" Kevorkian's lawyer, actually won the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Michigan earlier this year. By the time you read this (we write well before the November 3 election) we trust you will know that the abominable Mr. Fieger was roundly rejected by a great majority of Michigan's voters. But even a landslide defeat cannot wipe out the shame of his running at all without being publicly repudiated by both state and national Democratic leaders which (at this writing) has emphatically not happened.

Well now: if Fieger's "success" outrages you, our next offering should be just the antidote: our old friend John Matthews, erstwhile distinguished academic at Brandeis over here, is stewing away his retirement in Jolly Old England which, enjoyable as it is (he says he loves it there), cannot calm his anger and frustration at the demise of the Good Society-the ideal he tried to teach his students to pursue. This one is about "our" abortion issue, although as usual Mr. Matthews ranges far and wide over the moral landscape (bravo).

Next we interrupt ourselves for another of our "mini" symposiums, which are becoming a regular feature here. Normally symposiums are a kind of ad hoc debate, often merely transcribed from a "live" performance. But that format too often includes much tedious talk and/or repetition which invites the reader to give up. On the other hand, it is also difficult to get a single article to cover a complicated issue that ought to be viewed from more than one perspective. So we hit on the idea of providing our unique editorial mix: important pieces published elsewhere, interwoven with relevant fresh stuff we went out and got ourselves.

Also as usual, the special section has its own brief introduction (see page 30), which explains the title "Infanticide Chic II"-it is indeed a kind of sequel to our previous one (Winter '98) on Professor Steven Pinker's "peculiar" arguments justifying infanticide. In this one the Leading Man is Professor Peter Singer, an Australian who has gained considerable notoriety with his book Animal Rights-not for rats, of course, but a smart pig is in Singer's view worth more than an unwanted human, etc.-up to now he has been far better known back home and in Europe (where groups of "handicapped" people regularly protest his lectures) than over here, but that could change abruptly. As you will see, Singer has accepted the offer of a permanent chair in bioethics at once-Presbyterian Princeton University; beginning next July he will be lecturing at its prestigious University Center for Human Values, never mind that Singer is (as the Wall Street Journal put it) "a man who propagates a philosophy explicitly at odds with the civilization Princeton was founded to embody-and defend" (amen).

If Princeton should know better, so should Singer? A Jew who says he had relatives consumed in Hitler's Holocaust, Singer claims to see no connection whatever between his lethal proposals and the Nazis' extermination of lebensunwerten Lebens ("lives unworthy of life")-others do make the connection, for instance several members of Germany's parliament who have publicly compared Mr. Singer to Hitler's Deputy-for-Evil Martin Bormann.

You will note that Messrs. Oderberg and van Gend are fellow Australians, both well acquainted with Singer's career; they provide a "background check" that even Princeton ought to find interesting! Then, as always, Professor George McKenna adds a provocative view: he hopes the appointment of a Professor of Infanticide to an elite university will send "a wake-up call" to academia that Singer is a breach too far beyond the acceptable.

And Ellen Wilson Fielding points out an "in-house" interest: in our last (Summer) issue we ran the sad story of Marilyn Hogben ("What Size Is an Embryo's Soul?"), also an Australian, who agonized over the "final disposition" of her five "left-over" frozen embryos; she would have to "use" them, or order their destruction. Despite terrible pangs of conscience-the embryos were, after all, "potential" siblings of the daughter (and only child) she has, she had nightmares of willing five abortions-Ms. Hogben gave the order. Whose "advice" was decisive? Well, she had heard a professor discussing the issue on the radio; she e-mailed him asking for advice and, while she does not tell us exactly what his sage counsel was, we know what she did. The ready-to-help professor was (Who else?) Peter Singer.

Back to our regular articles; we have another good example of our "unique editorial mix" mentioned above, which in turn is a good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences-let us explain. Way back in 1974 when we were planning to launch our journal (this issue completes our 24th year of uninterrupted publication), we simply assumed that we'd never find enough "fresh" material on our "Life Issues" to fill a big quarterly: What to do? Our answer was to search out good stuff already published elsewhere; after all, our issues-abortion et al.were peripheral at best to most other journals, whereas we were putting together a "permanent record" of the Great Abortion War.

As it happened, we were quite wrong to fear too little original stuff: we've never been able to publish all we've got; we were quite right to think readers would enjoy the "mix" we've been presenting ever since-even if they have seen some of it before, it's useful to have it all wrapped up in one package? But in fact much of what we reprint is from "little" mags most readers never see (it's our job to find them for you); that is true of the most unusual piece by Read and Rachel Schuchardt, which first ran in a nicely-produced little quarterly titled re:generation.

You may well find their article not only informative but also charming, never mind that they begin with the ghastly facts about the New Jersey Prom Girl who delivered her baby in the Ladies Room, tossed it in the trash, and went back to dance some more; contrasted with the quiet young mother who welcomed septuplets, it illustrates, say R&R, the "culture of ambivalence" we now have about children. From there, they take you through the current scene as it looks to them, self-described as a young couple who just fell in love, married, and soon had three kidsyou know, just like people in love used to do.

Our final article is most certainly an important addition to our "permanent record"-it's a story that should have been recorded long since, but the sad truth is that there are not many investigative journalists who are also anti-abortion. Author Mary Meehan is an exception. You will see (at the bottom of page 76) that we describe her in a single line; true, we try to keep our "Bio" sketches short (and they are ours-if authors wrote them they might be much longer?), with just enough information to establish the writer's expertise. But in Mary Meehan's case, we could have justly used half a page; she is not only a veteran journalist but also a reporter of the Old School type-a vanishing breed. Time was when a "newspaperman" (alas, Mary might prefer "person"-she has feminist failings!) took great pride in getting the whole story, digging it all out was their craft, objectivity an honest goal, reporting what you found a matter of honor.

That's the kind of reporting you get in Meehan's in-depth account of how we've got to the point where it's "progressive"-not to mention "politically correct"for some people to advocate and fund the elimination of other people, for the crime of being. . . well, among the "lesser breeds" that superior people must deplore. In practice things can get out of hand, as in the current brutal "population policy" in Red China. But such horrors are merely aberrations of theory: there is a long and too-little-known history of the ideas that produce such consequences, which is what Meehan traces for you. We hope you will settle down and read it (it's history you should know), and that it will whet your appetite for more-which you will get in our next issue-Miss Meehan has done her job so thoroughly that you get only Part I here (the second half is as good or better, we've read it all of course).

Our appendices this time are fewer than usual, but as usual all relate in various ways to our articles, even Noemie Emery (Appendix A), who writes mainly about what everybody is writing about, i.e, "Sexgate" and what she calls "The Clinton Legacy," which of course includes our present (as we write) President's remarkable consistency in support of totally unrestricted abortion, up to and including "partial birth" infanticide. As Emery puts it, "Clinton proclaims he will carefully monitor [tobacco] ads . . . because parents `have a right to know' who is luring their children into smoking" but not to know "if their children are supplied with abortions" or even "transported for abortions out of state."

In Appendix B you get the text of another eloquent oration by the Honorable Henry J. Hyde of Illinois-who himself connects the same two controversies, "Sexgate" because he chairs the committee in charge, and abortion because he's the sans peer anti-abortionist in the U.S. House, where he delivered this floor speech in support of (What else?) the "partial birth" abortion ban.

Next is an editorial commentary from The Weekly Standard (Appendix C), which many think has already up-staged The New Republic as the hottest Washingtonbased political magazine. The issue, again, is the outrageous notion that parents have no right to know what is done to their daughters-even when it involves rape and de facto kidnapping-so long as the "issue" is abortion, re which "ordinary rules" no longer apply. Concludes The Standard: "There is now one reason, above all others" why the U.S. has "the Western world's most extreme and destructive abortion regime" and "That reason's name is William Jefferson Clinton."

The next two items complement each other; both begin with another abortion horror, the New Jersey Teen Sweethearts who achieved infamy by hurling their born-alive "ex-fetus" son across the alley into a motel trash bin. In Appendix D, Columnist Linda Chavez wonders why so brutal a murder produced sympathy from prosecutors-the two "kids" got off with minimal sentences -her answer is that we are well on the way to accepting "neonaticide"-the right to kill unwanted newborns. In Appendix E, Columnist Mona Charen also marvels at the kid-glove treatment given the guilty-as-Hell "parents" and the grotesque irony that their "punishment" is to include 300 hours of "community service" and that will include "counseling teenagers on parenthood"! Charen comments "That's what we need-child killers lecturing on what it means to be a parent!"

We move on to a different issue-or is it? Prostitution is called "the oldest profession" (journalism has been called the second oldest!) and without doubt Ladies of the Night have, like the Poor, always been with us. As a rule, the "pay and benefits" are ruinous, but now Modern Science has provided opportunities undreamed of on the streets. As Kathryn Jean Lopez puts it (Appendix F), "Young women in need of cash are increasingly deciding to sell their bodies"-not for an hour, but for an egg-they can get up to $5,000 as "donors" for infertile couplesit's the Brave New World as a growth industry!

We conclude with a piece we first ran some years back (Winter '95) by our roving European editor Mary Kenny; then it seemed like news-a distinguished "Freudian analyst" claiming that our culture, far from progressing re sex, is "regressing towards the `instant gratification' of the infantile"! We'd forgot about the piece, but recent events caused a Washington reader (she had remembered it) to call and ask for a copy. We obliged and, curious, re-read it ourselves. Not far into it we read that one manifestation of "infantile regression" was "the prevalence of denial of reality"-that did it, we obviously had something far more relevant now than when we first ran it. So we reprint it (Appendix G) for your edification, including the cartoon (by the peerless Nick Downes) we thought very funny then. We never dreamed that it was in fact a visual prophecy of what has come to pass, which is not funny at all.

There you have it, another issue chock full of good stuff you just can't find elsewhere, plus things you wouldn't want to miss-it is a unique mix, which we hope to go on providing while we can-some of it may be grim stuff, but be sure it's fun putting it all together for you-we hope to do as well next time.

Copyright Human Life Foundation, Incorporated Fall 1998
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