"But the truth is that abortion, like having a baby, losing a parent, having sex for the first time, getting married, etc. is a rite of passage."

This is a quote from a writer at Abortion Clinic Days where contributors journal about encounters with women seeking abortions. By expressing resignation and remorse at this "difficult, private decision," this blog is a clever way to romanticize cruelty.

It is also a forum for bashing pro-life extremism.

Though of course they don't realize they are engaging in the same kind of idiotic rhetoric they are so fond of accusing their opponents of. A rite of passage indeed! We may just as soon call the severing of a limb or a felony conviction a rite of passage.

In 2001, after a particularly inflammatory statement by Dick Gephardt, George Will wrote, "All extremists share an attribute: They elevate a single value over all others...Extremists are, in the phrase of the 19th-century historian Jacob Burckhardt, 'terrible simplifiers.'"

"But the truth is..." No, that is not the truth. But it does make you an extremist for saying it is.