"The issue was abortion."

Those are the words of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explaining the bitter battle for his confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1991. The discussion of Justice Thomas' Supreme Court nomination was part of the interview by Steve Kroft on the Sixty Minutes show broadcast this evening on CBS. The interview comes withe release of Justice Thomas' autobiography, My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir.

Actually, abortion, which violently destroys over one million unborn human lives every year in the US, has been at the heart of many of the most acrimonious battles in American politics over the past thirty five years. The conventional wisdom was (and still is in some circles) that the prolife movement would eventually fade away and that America would come to accept abortion-on-demand. Actually, the battle has been long and painful, but abortion has never become a 'settled' issue. Like the racial injustice Clarence Thomas faced while growing up, abortion is a great injustice that will not stand forever.