In today’s society, very few of our protected rights are absolute. It’s easy to find conditions in which a right must be restricted for the good of civilized people. We may have freedom of speech, but (famously) not to yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater. Many on the left think there is no right to keep and bear arms at all, despite what the Constitution says. The government and the courts are constantly pushing and pulling, trying to figure out where individual rights begin and end. With one notable exception. Abortion.

Somehow, abortion has become the one "right" the left demands be entirely unlimited, unregulated, and unmolested by government. Early term, late term, partial-birth, they are all protected all the time and don’t you dare suggest otherwise. It’s non-negotiable.

As it was with Bill Clinton, it seems that abortion will be the only ground over which our new leader will not negotiate. He promised as much at a Planned Parenthood function last year, and there’s no reason not to take him at his word. Abortion is, in fact, the only issue Obama has a record on. And while the press hasn’t trumpeted it, attention was paid after his careless "above my pay grade" dismissal of Rick Warren’s question about when "a baby gets human rights" - enough so that no responsible voter could claim ignorance of Obama’s history of abortion extremism.

Why is there such need to extinguish all significance from the abortion act? A need so compelling that Obama would acquiesce in outright infanticide rather than support legislation - proposed in 2003 in the Illinois State Senate, of which he was then a member - to protect the lives of babies who survived bungled abortions? Obama, who gathered a winning coalition under the banner of "change we can believe in," said "No" to this proposition a year after the U.S. Senate unanimously passed virtually identical legislation. Rescinding the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (along with all other state and federal abortion regulations) is the kind of change Obama believes in.

So not only does Obama believe that all abortions need to be performed, he wants to legislatively guarantee that they all succeed, even those that initially fail. What other medical procedure has a guaranteed "successful" outcome? And this brought a tear to my eye, written in 1976 by an abortion supporter:

In one chapter, after recording the discomfort she had felt while watching an abortion, Denes describes visiting the room where the remains of aborted fetuses are stored. At first, she recalls the unexpected pleasure of putting on surgical gloves and discovering that her "hands feel completely protected without any noticeable loss of agility." But pleasure quickly fades as she proceeds to inspect a "garbage-can-filled graveyard," using forceps to lift dead little human beings out of "paper buckets—the type in which one buys fried chicken from take-out stores."

Here she is at journey’s end: "Finally, I lift a very large fetus whose position is such that, rather than its stiff face, I first see its swollen testicles and abnormally large stiff penis. I look at the label. Mother’s name: Catherine Atkins; doctor’s name: Saul Marcus; sex of item: male; time of gestation: twenty-four weeks. I remember Catherine. She is seventeen, a very pretty blond girl. Not very bright. This is Master Atkins - to be burned tomorrow - who died like a hero to save his mother’s life. Might he have become someday the only one to truly love her? The only one to mourn her death? 'Nurse, nurse,' I shout, taking off my fancy gloves. 'Cover them up.' "

It’s telling that even an abortion rights supporter can’t look at the results of her advocacy. "Cover them up."