As I sit all warm and cozy in my home office composing this column in the early morning hours, I look out the window into a white winter wonderland. Snow is really coming down in North Central Maryland — "puttin' it down and pilin' it up," as my father-in-law Ted Randall always said at such times.
About 50 miles to my South, tens of thousands of unbelievably dedicated men, women, and children are gathering for the annual March for Life in the nation's capital. It's too early to know for sure, but I am confident the marchers will be undaunted by the snow and biting cold of this day.
After all, Marchers for Life have gathered every year on this day, come rain, snow, sleet, or sunshine, ever since the U.S. Supreme Court's shameful Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the killing of millions of unborn babies across America in 1973.
Thankfully, a wiser and humbler High Court ended Roe v. Wade with the historic Dobbs v. Jackson decision of 2022 by declaring the issue must be decided by American citizens, acting through their state legislatures, thus clearing the way, at least potentially, for America once again to be a nation that respects the God-given right to be born of every person conceived in a mother's womb.
Note well the preceding paragraph's qualifier — "at least potentially." It recalls Abraham Lincoln's stirring words in his Gettysburg Address, declaring that America was then "engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure."
That American conflict was sparked by the issue of slavery. The Roe v. Wade decision sparked the present cold civil war over the issue of the right to life. Now, in the coming days, thanks to Dobbs, we will see what Americans truly believe on this issue.
I had occasion yesterday to meet one of those marchers, Abby Johnson. She is a former Planned Parenthood director. Here is how she explains on her website why the time came when she could no longer abide that association:
All of that changed on September 26, 2009 when Abby was asked to assist with an ultrasound-guided abortion. She watched in horror as a 13 week baby fought for, and ultimately lost, its life at the hand of the abortionist. At that moment, she fully realized what abortion actually was and what she had dedicated her life to.
As it washed over Abby, a dramatic transformation had occurred. Desperate and confused, Abby sought help from a local pro-life group. She swore that she would begin to advocate for life in the womb and expose abortion for what it truly is.
It takes tremendous moral courage to see with such sudden and terrible clarity that you have been a party to so much death and destruction, to repent of it, and then devote your life to ending the terrible carnage. Abby Johnson is one such American, and I pray God blesses her work in every way, every day.
And then, in the opposite corner, there is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the personification in so many ways of the cultural ethos that has come to dominate so much of the American (and indeed Western) elite. Fauci finally admitted last week to a congressional panel the legitimacy of the "lab leak" theory of the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 1 million Americans beginning in January 2020.
Why is Fauci in "the other corner" from brave Americans like Abby Johnson? He has been all over the map on the issue of whether the coronavirus behind COVID-19 passed from bat meat in a Wuhan, China, meat market to human beings. Or did it leak from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Chinese scientists were conducting "gain-of-function" research with the virus?
That research was funded in great part with the knowledge and assistance of Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). When Fauci thought it served his self-interest, he sought to discredit the lab-leak theory. When the accumulating evidence pointed to the clear possibility that the theory is fact, Fauci changed his tune. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) contends Fauci lied to Congress in the process concerning his role in funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
When he recently retired, Fauci was the highest-paid career federal employee, earning more than $434,000. As I reported for The Epoch Times in 2021, that put Fauci in elite company: "Fauci is paid more than the president of the United States, the vice president, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and all nine Supreme Court justices."
Fauci became the chief rainmaker in the biodefense research industry sparked by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. His addiction to being in front of television cameras is legendary, which is saying something considering he is far from alone in that characteristic in D.C. His doublespeak on the issue of his accountability for funding gain-of-function research and on the origins of the coronavirus epitomize the duplicitous, self-serving hypocrisy of the elite.
Which kind of American — Abby Johnson or Anthony Fauci — would you prefer to win the present civil war?
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