By Dave Andrusko
Rally for Life '90
Today marks Part Four of Pro-Life Perspective’s important ten-part series on “Abortion in America.” As I did the first three days, I will offer a synopsis of what NRLC President Carol Tobias said in her five-minute broadcast.
I mentioned yesterday that the series “is proving to be an invaluable tutorial.” Carol Tobias’ broadcast today illustrates this assessment in a particularly telling way.
Each episode is a panoramic overview of the time slot—in this case 1987-1990. You’ll hear a lot about legislation (for example to prohibit the distribution of Title X family planning money to entities that use abortion as a method of family planning); presidential initiatives (when the Reagan Administration issued a moratorium on new federally funded fetal tissue transplant research and the appointment of a federal task force to encourage adoption as an alternative to abortion); Supreme Court decisions (including ones that upheld one parent and two parent notification); the early maneuverings by the makers of the abortifacient RU 486; and examples of National Right to Life’s indispensable leadership.
Speaking of the latter, Mrs. Tobias discusses the 1990 “Rally for Life,” including the background. Pro-abortionists had rallied in Washington, DC in April 1989, to the delight of the Washington media which inflated a probable turnout of perhaps 80,000 into 300,000, “one of the biggest political rallies in U.S. history” as a typical headline at the time said.
Pro-life champion Henry Hyde challenged the Movement to respond. One year later, the NRLC-led “Rally for Life” brought hundreds and hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to the Ellipse. Predictably, the massive turnout was both underreported and its size minimized.
I hope you are listening to these programs. If you missed any. just click on www.prolifeperspective.org.
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