NARAL CARES ABOUT THE MILITARY! Well, not really. But NARAL does care about servicewomen who can't get abortions in military hospitals while serving abroad, and it's lobbying Congress to make the military pay for abortions, or at least provide them at soldiers' expense. (See this post.) No surprise there: NARAL, like other pro-abortion groups, doesn't just believe that abortion-on-demand is a right, but that it's an entitlement. What is surprising is NARAL's attempt to saddle its pro-abortion agenda on the war effort:

At our nation's most critical hour, lawmakers have needlessly endangered the health of military servicewomen and dependents, preventing them from obtaining needed medical services and exercising their constitutional right to choose simply because they are stationed overseas. Women willing to sacrifice their lives for this country should not have to sacrifice their right to reproductive health care.

"At our nation's most critical hour"? Picture the scene: somewhere in Afghanistan, huddled on a mountainside as bullets fly overhead, G.I. Jane reaches inside her flak jacket and fingers the used pregnancy test dangling alongside her dogtags: it's positive. Exploding mortars shake the ground, heavy machinefire chews up the ground around her position. She fires a burst, and chomps her cigar with grim satisfaction as an al Qaeda soldier falls. But they keep coming. She's got her gun, her ammo, her grenades. But that's not enough. She needs more. She reaches for her radio, and shouts over the din: "Command, get me an abortion, ASAP!" Of course NARAL isn't really making the absurd argument that battlefield abortions are vital to the war effort. It's just that NARAL's real issue, getting government-funded abortions for servicewomen, is usually a loser, so NARAL is repackaging it in Old Glory. "For flag! For country! For abortion!" (Or maybe, "Praise God and pass the ammo! And the speculum!") Who knows, maybe that'll get some pro-abortionists, who tend to be feminists, who tend to view the military as a patriarchal, violent, and otherwise icky endeavor, behind our troops (at least the unwillingly preggo ones). But with the exception of rabid pro-abortionists, I figure most Americans who support the right to abortion see it as a necessary evil, something to be tolerated, not celebrated, and not paid for by the government. I doubt NARAL's flag-waving probably will appeal to this moderate, mainstream pro-abortion constituency. What most Americans see as a war of national survival, in which real soldiers are fighting and dying for their country, NARAL sees as an opportunity to hawk government-funded abortions. That should make any decent American sick -- whether or not he supports abortion. But then, all of NARAL's radical positions should have that effect.