"From conception to natural death"

By chance one day we happened to hear Mr. Steve Forbes quoted (on the news radio station that provides background noise in the office) as saying that "Life begins at conception and ends at natural death." That caught our ear, but by the time we turned up the volume, the reporter was already onto another item. Not surprisingly, we wished we had heard the whole story-it was surprising to hear from an "active political person" a phrase that would have been at home in a papal encyclical.

Why not hear more? We had never met Mr. Forbes, but of course we "knew" him via his dramatic intervention into the 1996 Republican presidential primaries. During that campaign, our impression was that he had begun with the typical "I'm personally opposed but" position on abortion, but had then made overtures to the "pro-life" side before his withdrawal from the race. If the news report was accurate, he had since come quite a bit further in that direction? We decided to find out, from the source if possible.

We called his office (not far from our own here in Manhattan), and were referred to his "Americans for Hope, Growth and Opportunity" group in Virginia; we explained both our interest and what our journal was all about, and suggested an interview. A few days later we got a Yes answer, and fixed the date for the morning of September 10. Our Contributing Editor William Murchison flew up from Dallas the night before, to join Managing Editor Anne Conlon for the interview.

The next morning-a wet, foggy one-we heard that Mr. Forbes was grounded at the Atlanta airport, and would have to fly direct to Dallas for a speaking engagement that night! Back to Dallas flew Mr. Murchison and, after a bit more confusion, the interview duly took place there that evening.

The interview speaks for itself. We transcribed it from an audio tape and, but for a very few "cosmetic" deletions (a repetition here, an extra "ah . . ." there) you get a record of what was said. Indeed, the recording was remarkably "clean"both gentlemen are articulate and well-spoken-the questions were clear and the answers unusually concise, as we think you will agree.

More, there is very little to explain: Mr. Forbes early on mentions "Fitzsimmons" without identifying him-he knew that Mr. Murchison knew the name, and we imagine most of our regular readers do as well-for those who do not, Ron Fitzsimmons is the Executive Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, the Washington lobby for "independent" (i.e., not part of Planned Parenthood et al.) abortion mills; it was Fitzsimmons who admitted that he "lied through my teeth" when he told Ted Koppel on TV's Nightline (in November, 1995) that partial birth abortions were both "rare" and done only in "hard cases" when in fact he well knew that up to 5,000 are done yearly with no "medical necessity" involved, etc.

Likewise, many readers will remember that Plessy v. Ferguson (which Mr. Forbes compares to Roe v. Wade) was the 1896 Supreme Court decision that baptized "separate but equal" segregation, and that U.S. Senator Paul Coverdell is a Republican from Georgia. Beyond that, we find nothing obscure, so we'll recall the advice of an old malaprop friend of ours, who often said "Don't lard the lily"-read it all for yourself, it's refreshingly honest stuff, certainly from someone who clearly intends to remain an "active political person"?

A footnote: this journal does not typically concern itself directly with political matters, if only because so few "political persons" say things that bear directly on our concerns. But it is fair to note that we first published then-President Ronald Reagan's historic "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" in our Spring, 1983 issue; earlier, we also ran an article by Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, then the Democratic Governor of California (see the Summer, 1977 issue). It is also true that we have offered our pages to a number of political figures (e.g., then-Vice President George Bush) who declined the offer; we intend to extend more such offers in due course.

Copyright Human Life Foundation, Incorporated Fall 1997
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