I am on the road this week guest-lecturing at the Notre Dame School of Law and the Ave Maria School of Law. In place of my regular column, I am sending a few articles that touch on abortion in America in light of today’s 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that mandated legal abortion in all fifty states. I hope you enjoy reading some of these compelling items.

• An inspiring news article in today’s LA Times about how the pro-life cause stirs the younger generation, motivated by “a sense that millions of their peers are missing.”

• Dorinda Bordlee and Nik Nikas, attorneys and co-founders of the Bioethics Defense Fund, on the powerful witness of a peaceful prolife movement; also, Nikas counsels that we should be persistent in the struggle to end abortion, noting that the movement is relatively young and that true social change occurs over extended periods of time. See BDF’s list of the The Top Seven Pro-Life Victories here.

• Robert George, whose essays never disappoint, provides a superlative example of respectful logic delivered with kindness in his open letter to Anne Rice, addressing Anne Rice’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton, despite Rice’s pro-life convictions.

• George Weigel offers a worthwhile tribute to “the most consequential Catholic legislator of his time”, the Honorable Congressman from Illinois, Henry Hyde. Congressman Hyde fought tirelessly in defense of those who have no voice. As Weigel notes, “If the pro-life movement is the great civil rights movement of our time, then Henry J. Hyde was one of America’s greatest civil rights leaders. Today’s holy innocents, who welcomed him at his final homecoming on November 29, had no doubt about that.”

• In an April, 2007 In Focus Essay, Westchester Institute Fellow and attorney Michelle Gress analyzes Gonzales v. Carhart, the first Supreme Court decision to uphold legislative limits on the grisly partial birth abortion procedure.

• Michael J. New, of the University of Alabama, discusses the positive news about abortion trends that has been ignored by the mainstream press.

My regular column, With Good Reason, will resume next week.

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