Speaking of the "underground railroad."

I pointed out the irony of using this term for destructive embryonic stem cell research in my last post.

And I was reminded again, in Nat Henthoff's latest column, "The Devaluing of Life," in which he quotes Jesse Jackson:

The boy's spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: "There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.

"That," he continued, "was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned." This passionate reverend used to warn: "Don't let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn't a human being. That's how the whites dehumanized us... The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do and not even feel they'd done anything wrong."

Please, read Mr. Henthoff's column on the devaluing of human life crossing lines of politics and stages of life and the wisdom of children and a consistent life ethic.