President Bush will present the Presidential Medal of Freedom today at a White House ceremonyto Henry Hyde. The former Illinois congressman is being honored for his decades of national leadership in defending preborn citizens.

A White House press release President Bush said, “During his career in the House of Representatives, [Congressman Hyde] was a powerful defender of life and a leading advocate for a strong national defense and for freedom around the world.”

The event is an unintended, but powerful, retort to folks like columnist George Will – prone to argue that it no longer really matters what a candidate for president thinks about abortion. A president (and most elected officials for that matter) has many ways to impact the culture that go beyond the power to appoint judges. In this case, President Bush provides legitimacy and focus and encouragement to the whole pro-Life movement by honoring one of its own.

And there is no doubt that Henry Hyde is one of our best.

I have on my office wall a quote which Hyde delivered at his retirement banquet:

“When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that terrible moment, the final judgment, I’ve often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates there, you are there alone standing before God and a terror will rip your soul like nothing you can imagine.

“But I really think that those in the pro-Life movement will not be alone.

“I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard very beautifully and very loudly in the next world and I think they will plead for everyone who has been in the movement.

“They will say to God, ‘spare them, because they loved us,’ and God will look at us and say not, ‘Did you succeed?’ but ‘Did you try’?”

-- David Ripley