A few years ago Henry Hyde came to New York to be honored at the Human Life Foundation dinner honoring him and its founder, former NR Associate Publisher Jim McFadden. Upon receiving his award Mr. Hyde gave a brief talk on the fight against abortion. It was rather moving, and is very fitting for this week, as our good friend is laid to rest on Friday. Here is its ending:

But I think what I will do is read to you something I ran across a few years ago at the funeral of another great warrior for the unborn: Joe Stanton up in Boston. And at his funeral there was a little booklet printed. And it had in it a poem by somebody named CVS. I don’t know who that is. But boy does this apply to Jim McFadden. So please permit me to share it with you.
Traveling from afar he neared the gate
And seeing no one, paused
Dusty, footsore, spent
Bone tired, if the truth were known,
And rested on his cane.
The gates swung idly there
Inviting any pilgrim inside,
Where all was cool and still.
He felt a peace enfold him
And he knew that he was home
Then, like a great wind they came,
Filling the air with a sound,
A most unlikely regiment of children
As far as the eye could see.
Noisy, babbling, weeping,
A Lilliputian army
Not one, by measure, reached his knee
Calling his name with joy and welcoming
Clutching his coat as if to make him theirs.
Aye, he was theirsHad been always.
Fought for them all
With blood and bone and nerve
Those dead, dear children.
All our sons and daughters
The smothered secrets of our public shame
And he would weep
Weep and remember
There is no peace while the red river flows
And mourn those lives, written not in water
But in the martyrs’ love that stains the rose.
That is a poetic expression of the love we all bear Jim McFadden; and we look at the record he established, the example that he made. And I think of a statement I read on a dedication of a hospital once. And it made-it struck a chord with me—so let me just wind up by leaving this with you: “Those tragedies which break our hearts again and again are not more numerous than the healing influences that mend them. More impressive than the brokenness of our heart is the fact we have a heart, and it’s tender enough to suffer. Even the scar tells us of more than the wound we have sustained; it tells us we have prevailed. And all the agony in the world can’t erase the fact that a man is born, and life and thought, emotion and choice, love and reason go on inside him.”
I want to salute every one of you here for your membership in the greatest organization in the world, the pro-life movement. You know why it’s great? No self-interest. Most groups look for shorter workweeks, wider sidewalks, no hammerhead sharks in the district-all sorts of things. But the pro-life movement has no self-interest. It hurls itself on the battlements because it wants to defend the most helpless and vulnerable of God’s creatures.
Henry Adams, when he visited the Cathedral at Chartres said, “it embodies the noblest aspirations of mankind; the reaching up to Infinity.” That’s what the pro-life movement does. That’s what you do; and I hope that some day we will all be there and hear the same words that Jim McFadden heard five years ago today when our time comes: “Come beloved of my Father and enter the Kingdom which has been prepared for you since the beginning of time.” Thank you so much.