The momentum now is with the opponents ur hero, Henry Hyde!" shouted the speaker last week at a rally in Cincinnati's Fountain Square. As the portly Republican Congressman from Illinois stepped to the rostrum, the crowd of 3,500 chanted: "Life! Life! Life!" Elderly women wearing white gloves held up red roses. Men lifted up small children. "We're here to remind America of its soul," declared the silver-haired Hyde. "Religious ideals have always guided our country." When he was done speaking, members of the audience began another cadenced cheer: "We're for life, and we couldn't be prouder. Get a little closer, and we'll yell a little louder!" Finally a defiant roar: "No compromise! No compromise!"
The issue was abortion, and the fight was supposed to have been settled in 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state may not prevent a woman from having an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy until the fetus is presumably capable of "meaningful life outside the mother's womb." But as the passionate cries in Fountain Square showed, the battle is far from over. The rally capped a convention in which the forces opposed to abortion spent most of four days planning strategy for next year's elections and state legislative sessions. In heaping praise on Hyde, they honored a politician who was responsible for one of their most important victories: a 1976 amendment that effectively cut off nearly all federal financing of abortions.
Not far away, on the edge of the Ohio River, some 2,000 men and women staged counterdemonstrations. They carried white carnations and sang: "Fighting for our women, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree that's planted by the water, we shall not be moved." They placed coat hangers at the motel doors of the pro-life supporters, with signs reading NO MORE COAT HANGER ABORTIONS. They even tacked a "proclamation of religious liberty" onto the pillar of St. Peter in Chains Cathedral to protest what they consider the Roman Catholic Church's attempts to coerce all Americans into following the church's teachings against abortion.
Across the country, the battle is turning increasingly political and is waged by men and women who offer no quarter. It is a fierce clash of fundamental beliefs in which name calling is considered as potent as reasoned argument. Thus the antiabortionists call themselves "pro-lifers" and denounce their opponents as "baby killers." Those who support a woman's right to abortion call themselves "prochoice" and deride the other side as "compulsory pregnancy people."