Introduction

This issue, which begins our twenty-fourth year of continuous publication (nobody is more surprised than we are that we've lasted this long!), faced us with a delightful dilemma: How should we begin it? We were sorely tempted to start right off with the article on the late Justice William Brennan, by Professor Mary Ann Glendon and Eric Treene-it's an honor to have the distinguished Author/ Professor in our pages, and of course Justice Brennan, who might be called the "proximate cause" of Roe v. Wade, contributed greatly to this journal's raison d'etre, we owe him the kind of attention Glendon and Treene give him here.

We also might have begun with our special section on Infanticide Chic: coming just 25 years after Roe, it's a stunning confirmation of the "slippery slope" predictions that were derided as "extremist" in 1973. But on reflection, we decided we had better set the stage a bit first, since we had just the right piece at hand to do exactly that. So we begin with our stalwart friend Mr. William Murchison, who reports on yet another vexed question: Dare we clone humans?

As you will see, this "new" controversy is indeed a fitting introduction to what follows; the arguments now being advanced for cloning humans hardly differ from those used to promote abortion-there are "hard cases" involved, and of course "compassionate" people want to help. Anyway, if "science" can do something, it must be right to do it? In reality, as Murchison puts it, "What we know is less than nothing" about the soul of the matter.

Murchison also introduces our next question as well: What ever happened to "over-population"? Back when Roe was conceived, the global-sized justification was that "we" couldn't possibly support so many babies-how aborting our future would de-populate China was never explained, but then such arguments defy logic. But as Mr. Nicholas Eberstadt makes clear, there has been a "dramatic reassessment" of over-population theory and-if the new projections turn out to be accurate, the looming disaster will be caused by de-population, which in fact is already well advanced in "our" Western world (once-fecund Italians now have the world's lowest birth rate!).

As you will see, Eberstadt tells you a great deal more as well. Indeed, we'd call his article a model of what a "research" paper can be (but usually isn't), not only crammed with pertinent information but also written for the reader-too often scholarly papers seem to be directed at the author himself? He also stays factually calm about things that may shock you, such as that-if current UN "projections" prove accurate-within some 50 years "developed" countries (like us) could have more people aged 75 to 85 than children ten and under. Meaning our current fears about Social Security would be over; there wouldn't be any.

After such a mind-boggling view, you may be ready to enjoy Faith Abbott's latest tale, even though it is hardly light-hearted stuff. As we write, the "guilty" plea of the so-called "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is front-page news, while his cold-blooded crimes have largely faded from the reportage. But they will never fade from the mind or body of David Gelernter, who on a bright June morning in 1993 opened the book-package bomb "Ted" had mailed to him. The explosion split his life forever into two distinct before-and-after compartments. But in fact the bomb carried a surprise for the Unabomber too: his victim turned out to be a man of formidable intellect, and a gifted writer.

In short, the bomb not only failed to kill, as "Ted" intended, but also inspired a book that is in effect a literary celebration of everything the hate-driven Unabomber lived to destroy. It is titled, simply, Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber, which is utterly accurate-Gelernter could have drawn death from that package, and the book is the story of how he survived. It also projects the author's intact sense of humor: a talented artist, Gelernter can paint again despite the virtual loss of his drawing hand. Sounds like a powerful saga? It does to us: we got it all from what Faith gives you here-we haven't even read the whole book yet, but we will now, and we'd be surprised if you don't likewise.

Along the way, Gelernter (no doubt confident that he has the reader's attention?) gets off some good shots at what you might fairly call pet peeves, among them the pernicious effects of feminist ideology on American families. But such aggravation is by no means restricted to Americans, as our next article makes clear. Mrs. Lynette Burrows, our faithful and (very) English correspondent, lives in Cambridge, where she willy-nilly breathes the academic atmosphere in which such exotic ideologies thrive. But she also gets around: down to London frequently to take part in those inimitable BBC debate programs, up to Scotland for live confrontations, meanwhile dashing off columns for various papers, doing books (she recently updated her Good Children, a handbook for intelligent parents), and so on. Here, she stops to conquer some feminist myths about "equality" and even to defend our Promise Keepers (who have gained controversial notoriety over there too)-it's hard to describe all you will get in her sharplydrawn essay, but it certainly makes good reading.

As it happens, we follow with another unusual essay, this one from our longtime colleague Ellen Wilson Fielding, who ponders (of all things!) the "relationship between Democracy and humility"-don't dismay, she makes an excellent point, namely that the self-promotion it takes to get elected often distorts the politician's perception of what he ought to do with the power he's won. Which is to balance the "rights" our leaders love to dispense with the duties ordinary citizens must assume if those rights are to mean something more than the power of some over others. Sounds like the right argument for our rights-obsessed era?

Without doubt, the most fantastic "right" of all is the putative right to an abortion, for any female of any age at any time during the full nine months of her pregnancy-which is, de facto, what the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, never mind that a majority of Americans still think that only "early" abortions were legalized. The putative author of that fiat was Justice Harry Blackmun, whose intellectual lights were notoriously dim-Roe owes much more to the Court's then-dominant intellect, which belonged to Justice William Brennan. "By all accounts," our next authors, Mary Ann Glendon and Eric Treene tell us, "William Brennan was a gifted and likable man." How could this "avowed champion of the weak and vulnerable" (as our authors describe him) midwife the most deadly High Court decision since Dred Scott?

As you will see, Glendon and Treene search impressively for the answeryou will learn a great deal both about Justice Brennan and the way the Court works-but they end up having to admit that they remain baffled as to why Brennan, "remembered by so many for his personal warmth and compassion, became complicit in the slaughter of innocents."

Some may consider the question too kindly put: Brennan surely knew what he was doing? But our authors are not at all vindictive. They consider the evidence most judiciously, and certainly give Brennan fair treatment, which makes their story that much more fascinating to read-you're free to draw your own conclusions about what secrets Bill Brennan took to his grave.

Next comes our special section on "Infanticide Chic?"-a half-dozen pieces all wrestling with the question of whether or not the avatars of abortion really mean to justify the killing of born babies. Actually, we need not say a great deal about it here-Maria McFadden gives you the proper introduction (see page 77). But we would like to point out yet again that, whatever the intentions of Professor Steven Pinker and his ilk, their rhetoric never strays far from the fundamental "hard case" arguments used to "explain" the need for abortion, and then euthanasia, and now even cloning-Why not infanticide next?

However, we might add a few facts, for instance that Professor Pinker is a doctrinaire Darwinist who claims that our minds have "evolved" just like all "species" have, so it's quite understandable that today's teenager would have atavistic urges-"left-overs" from our Hunter-Gatherer forebears-to smother her "surplus" baby. Funny: when Darwinists explain the "How" they employ the late Carl Sagan's mantra "billions and billions of years"-given that much time, anything is possible-but our putative Hunter-Gatherer ancestors are hardly remote enough to account for such convenient explanations? Especially when such "cognitive science" seems to have evolved mainly in the mind of Professor Pinker himself-a twice-married non-parent (he's "chosen" to remain childless) academic just over 40 years old? As it happens, Maria called Pinker to ask if we could reprint his entire Times piece-we thought you should judge for yourself-he replied that, well, er, he wouldn't want that unless he could "add to it," and he was too busy. So we can't give you what he published in the nation's most widely-distributed Sunday newspaper.

As Maria notes, Professor George McKenna wrote his commentary at our request, and we were delighted that he focused on why the Times would run such a "provocative" piece. The answer, it seems, is that with the pro-abortion forces clearly in retreat, expanding the battlefield might help stem a rout? As McKenna adds, even cloning humans has been getting "favorable" treatment in the Times!

The other four articles in the section have all appeared elsewhere; in an ordinary issue, several might have appeared as appendices here, but in this case they all fit together, as you will see.

Thus our appendices in this issue are a mere half dozen, but each of them adds something of importance. In Appendix A, our friend Ray Kerrison recounts a truly bizarre happening: Al Gore, Bill Clinton's anointed heir, telling "Weatherpersons" that the solution to Global Warming is . . . fewer children! As we write (see more below), the chances of Mr. Gore becoming the next president seem greatly increased, meaning that his now-merely-derisible notions could become serious policy problems. (We did have a good guffaw when Mr. Clinton dispatched "Mr. Global Warming" to up-state New York last January to comfort the victims of a devastating ice storm!)

In Appendix B, the celebrated Columnist George Will adds to the record of our "slippery slope" from abortion to infanticide. Obviously what he says bears directly on Professor Pinker's ideas about "evolutionary psychology," but Will sees another evolution too one that is "tugging" us back from "the comforting premise of the abortion culture, that a fetus is nothing." In Appendix C, the subject is still another New York Times article, this one a recent Op-Ed piece that in effect claims that marriage causes more poverty than divorce. So we asked our friend Maggie Gallagher-who knows a thing or two about the subject-to comment for us, and what she has to say is very interesting indeed.

Next we have a powerful little essay (Appendix D) by Mr. Paul Greenberg, pondering what fellow-columnist George Will calls our "abortion culture"Greenberg was in a courtroom while "highly civilized beings" argued the question "whether it should remain permissible" in Arkansas "to kill an almost delivered human baby" (i.e., a "partial birth" abortion ban)-it made him think a number of "irrelevant" thoughts, for instance whether or not some of history's greatest crimes have been committed by "highly civilized beings" who somehow allowed themselves to become dehumanized to the point that they "speak of fetal viability and fetal demise, not life and death."

As it happens, "fetal viability" describes what has fascinated Dr. James Le Fanu; in Appendix E he describes how, well into his medical career (and after delivering many babies himself) he began to see an "ineffable mystery" in what his embryology textbooks make into "a rather dreary subject" whereas in fact it's amazing how "some cells know to go off" and do this, others that, organizing themselves irresistibly into a baby. This leads him into a discourse on a book which describes the "irreducibly complex" mystery of all cells, which leads the book's author (a distinguished biochemist) to conclude that only "intelligent design" can explain it all. Here again, you may want to run out and get the book yourself (we did, it's the best Who-Done-It we've read in ages!).

We end this issue (Appendix F) with an editorial from National Review "celebrating" the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. Editorials are of course not signed; they represent the opinion of the magazine, and for most of the years since 1973 National Review was the only serious journal that stood stoutly against Roe (just as its founding editor, William F. Buckley, Jr. was one of the few newspaper columnists to do so). But if our information is correct, this one was written by a young man barely born when the Court's fiat came down; he thus personifies what the Justices failed to do, namely, mandate the "final solution" to the greatest moral issue since slavery.

As you can imagine, we would have liked to say a great deal more about the infamous decision in this issue. However, while quarterlies have great advantages (e.g., they are far more "permanent" than ordinary magazines), they suffer from too much "lead time"-ours is still printed in the old-fashioned way, with a "perfect" binding like a book, and so on-which means that it is quite impossible to cover current events. So when I began writing this, I expected to convey my regrets, and the promise to do more on Roe next time. It was much on my mind, because in fact I was finishing up on the very eve of Roe's anniversary.

That night the media blared out what some instantly called "Sexgate" (or, to be more restrained, "the latest White House sex scandal"). For a moment we wondered how we could handle that in our slow-moving pages . . . but only for a moment. As we listened to the details of the scandal, we realized how blessed we were to be stuck with our snail's pace handicap: the last thing in this world we want to do is write about those details, which do not belong in a journal such as this one. So we will leave all that to those who have the stomach for it. The whole thing should be over-and the whole world sick of it-by the time our next issue comes to you, with its accustomed good, clean stuff.

Copyright Human Life Foundation, Incorporated Winter 1998
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