This is a familiar dance we’re doing tonight—this charade where pro-lifers come here once a year and plead, and where you grin and bear it. But this won’t go on forever. There are a finite number of these get-togethers, and every time you hear the facts it increases your culpability. Then the Judge will come, and where will you be then, having forged your chain link by link, like Ebenezer’s partner Marley? Today, while you have today, be courageous.

The only board I normally stand before is the cutting board. But Jill asked if I would say a few words before the august conclave of our large regional hospital on the fourth Tuesday in January. It was once again that time of year when the meeting is, by law, open to the public. And once again the community pro-life contingency would shuffle in and disgorge their five-minute index cards pleading for the unborn, and poker-faced powers-that-be would be glad when it’s over. This has been the drill for decades.

It gave me a chance to dust off my stack of yellow legal pads from an old WORLD assignment. Here was my five minutes’ worth, though not equal to what the Christian doctor and Nigerian and American pastors shared:

Thank you for the opportunity to address the board of this hospital. Five years ago my magazine assigned me to the Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia, from which I sent back daily dispatches. I sat directly behind Dr. Gosnell the first few weeks, which was easy to do because practically no one was there except a couple of lonely reporters from the Daily News and Philadelphia Magazine.

Later the world showed up. Everybody wanted Gosnell found guilty. The pro-lifers wanted him put away because he killed babies for a living. The pro-abortion crowd wanted him put away because they understood that a lot would come out about abortion, and it would look uncomfortably similar to what had occurred at 3801 Lancaster Avenue.

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