The controversy this week involving the president insisting that pro-lifers be flexible on the Hyde amendment in budget negotiations in Congress has me longing for the days of the late Illinois Republican Congressman Henry Hyde. He drew the line on taxpayer funding of abortion, and so much else.
His most quoted remarks are unforgettable. He says:
When the time comes as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgement, I’ve often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God, and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world, and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, “Spare him because he loved us,” and God will look at you and say not “Did you succeed?” but “Did you try?”
But there was also this, from the House floor in 1993. He talked about the “cry of the heart” from the unborn:
The French have a marvelous gift for phrasemaking. And one of their marvelous phrases is cri de coeur. A cry of the heart. . . .
There are two cries of the heart in every human being’s life.
The very first cry of the heart occurs in the womb. And if you ever look at a sonogram picture . . . that is when the first cri de coeur occurs.
I want to be born.
It is a reflection of instinct, the urge to survive.
It is inaudible but it is there.
I want to be born.
And the second cry of the heart is at the end of your life. It’s the last thing you say: I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.
Abortion violates both of those cri de coeur.
It violates your right to be born, your right to life, which our Declaration says is a fundamental endowment and it is inalienable, the right to life.
Listen to the cry.
To hell with flexibility.
And, oh, by the way, the White House used the Hyde amendment as credibility with “people of faith” in the fall.
A Grateful Son on Adoption
“My adopted parents told me I was chosen. But the kids at school told me I was a bastard,” Michael Reagan writes in his 2004 memoir Twice Adopted.
Reagan, born John Charles Flaugher, died this week at 80, after a battle with cancer. It was a journey, but Reagan was tremendously grateful to the birth mother he never met, and to his adopted parents. In Twice Adopted, Reagan writesabout the woman, Essie Irene Flaugher, who chose life for him:
Understand: She could have had me aborted. Though abortion was illegal in those days, it was not uncommon. She could have had “the procedure,” then gotten on with her life after a few days’ recuperation
She gave birth at the Queen of Angels Hospital here in Los Angeles and named me John after my birth father. Irene wanted to make sure I would have a good home, so she insisted on meeting the adoptive parents.
She found it easier to “give me up” when she learned that her baby would be raised in the home of a wealthy Hollywood couple, Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman.
Before the adoption was finalized, my two mothers, Irene and Jane, met in the hospital room and talked about an hour.
The adoption was completed three days after I was born.
Irene passed away the day after Christmas 1985, two years before I began searching for my birth mother.
She never got to hear me say: “Thank you, Irene, for giving me life.” Though I never got to meet her and thank her, I honor her.
So I have two mothers, one gave birth to me and loved me enough to give me life and give me away. The other loved me enough to take me into her home and raise me as her own flesh and blood.
In Search of the Dark Side (Is There Any Other Side?) of Surrogacy
Infertility is an awful misery. Surrogacy is not a moral answer to solve it. It exploits women. It ends lives.
The New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago did remarkable work covering the global surrogacy market and what it does to women — which isn’t even fully knowable, even by the very women being commodified in it. The reporter focuses on some Thai women in Georgia who likely had eggs stolen while they thought they were waiting to be surrogates.
The piece chronicles how the hot spots for surrogacy have changed, and how the prices that women are paid widely differ, based on what the industry, such that it is, can get away with. It’s a long piece, worth reading. But the very framing — looking at the dark side of surrogacy — betrays its limitations. By the article’s end, there is an attempt to suggest that an ethical surrogacy market is possible. It’s not.
There are children in foster care in our country, in orphanages throughout the world. We don’t need to create designer babies, using women as incubators, robbing children of the most intimate relationship they will ever have in their lives, which began when they did.
Anyway, for all our frustrations with the New York Times, they have the resources to be able to do a piece like this. Thanks be to God. The conclusions may be off, but the evidence can unite people of goodwill who are concerned about women, children, and those couples with love to give and such a miserable cross to bear.
Other Things
• We got a new food pyramid from the federal government this week. Wouldn’t it be nice if women were protected from mail-order abortion pills, too?
• From former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson on Facebook:
In my experience, one of the very best things you can teach your children is that a pregnancy will ALWAYS be celebrated in your home. No matter how the child was conceived, no matter your child’s age or circumstances . . . a baby is a blessing. It may change the plans they had for their lives or the plans you had for them, but the creation of that child was not a mistake by God.
If we celebrated the gift of children, there would be far fewer abortions.
Upcoming
• NEXT WEEK: Senate HELP Committee to Hold Hearing on Protecting Women from Dangerous Abortion Drugs
• Do you know about Life Fest? It’s the morning of the March for Life. I talk with two Sisters of Life about it here.
Around National Review
• The Editors: Don’t Sell Out Pro-Lifers to Save Obamacare
• Wesley J. Smith:
Will Assisted Suicide Coupled with Organ Harvesting Come to the U.S.?
My Criticism of Lawrence Masek’s Bioethics Article Stands
Peter Singer Decries AI ‘Speciesism’
• Michael J. New: Congressional Republicans Need to Strengthen, Not Weaken, Hyde Protections
• Audrey Fahlberg: Trump Tells House Republicans to Be ‘Flexible’ on Hyde Amendment in Health-Care Negotiations
• Me:
Drinking Doesn’t Have to Be a Given: Reflections on Alcohol and Freedom
Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Is Dying
Quiet, Now, and Pray for the Man Behind Dilbert
Sometimes, Girls Just Want to Sing
Ben Sasse Reminds Us That Life Is Precious
In Closing
Today is the anniversary of my father’s death. It seems wrong to have a newsletter that has to do with life and death without acknowledging this. His was a sudden, untimely death. My prayers for everyone suffering such a jarring, devastating loss. It’s not exactly worse this time of year, and yet, it does add to the sting. He was a good man. And good men help us see the truth of God the Father’s love for us.
Email anytime, for any reason, at klopez@nationalreview.com