The Week

-- Anyone who has witnessed the joy of new life will know that newborn babies are able vigorously to express an impressive range of emotions - - distress, insecurity, contentment, happiness. It is not likely that this ability begins precisely at birth; presumably an unborn child has it, too. The latest generation of prenatal scanning equipment, called "3D/4D ultrasound technology," confirms this. Until now, ultrasound images of children in the womb have revealed only fuzzy white blobs, which might as well have been remote galaxies seen through a badly focused telescope. Well, this newer technology delivers pictures of astonishing clarity and depth of detail. They clearly show unborn infants smiling, yawning, blinking, and fidgeting, even sucking their thumbs. This is, of course, very bad news for the abortion industry. Congressional legislation to provide free 3D/4D screenings in clinics taking federal funds has been savagely attacked by the armies of "choice." Seethed NARAL's Allison Herwitt: "They [i.e. pro-life campaigners] don't want women to go to Planned Parenthood, where they'll get their full range of options. They just want them to go to crisis-pregnancy centers, where women will be exposed to this weapon at taxpayer's expense." Weapon? Isn't the purpose of a weapon to take life, while this new scanning technology will . . . Oh, never mind.

-- One day the deputy prime minister of Israel said that expulsion was "one of the options" in dealing with Yasser Arafat, and so was "killing." The next day the foreign minister said that killing was "not an official policy of the Israeli government." But of course it is: Israel picks off terrorist masterminds, as would any state under mortal attack. Salus populi suprema lex. But the supreme law of carrying out such decisions is not to discuss them beforehand, especially if one then does not carry them out. Arafat has not fulfilled his obligations under the Oslo process to throttle terror; rather he has unleashed it. The classic argument of those who resist removing him has always been that he would be replaced by someone worse. No doubt he would. But that person would know that his predecessor had been removed. Such grave decisions should not be taken in the atmosphere of a college bull session.

-- Saudi Arabia's ever-vigilant Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has reiterated its ban on Barbie dolls in the kingdom. On its website, the committee thunders that: "Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories, and tools, are a symbol of decadence [in] the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers!" The following reflection will already have occurred to those readers who saw the 2001 movie Rat Race: While they may not care for the girlie doll, there is another Barbie whom these loathsome despots would be only too happy to acquaint their children with -- Klaus Barbie, Gestapo chief in France during WW2. Some marketing opportunity here, perhaps, for whatever is the Saudi equivalent of Mattel.