CNN, whose famed founder Ted Turner once said the Ten Commandments should be the Ten Suggestions, has squelched political speech aimed against what its proponents' believe is an American holocaust against unborn and partially born humanity.

CNN barred a pro-life ad that reportedly super-imposes facts about President Obama's life before ultrasound images of living unborn child to show the irony that if the pro-abortion 'rights' Obama had been aborted because of anticipated difficult circumstances in his and his parents' lives, America would have lost the otherwise talented president it now has. What purer political speech could there be? 

Yet CNN claims that it will not show the ad absent President Obama's permission. Permission for what? Ostensibly, permission for the ad to portray him as pro-life, or to portray his viewpoint about a "personal matter." But the ad doesn't portray President Obama as pro-life at all. And if abortion were a personal matter for President Obama, he would not have made it the public policy issue he did in his campaign.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that we are all uncertain of conclusive proof of when life begins as a matter of absolute authority. With this premise, pro-life advocates could be right or wrong; pro-abortion advocates could be right or wrong about when life begins.

In the absence of certainty, to err on the side of pro-life and say human life begins at conception and be wrong would do much less harm than erring with pro-choice and saying human life begins at viability, or, when a mother wants a child.

To side with pro-choice and be wrong equals holocaust: innocent lives destroyed for an ideological stab at an uncertain dogma about when life begins that if wrong, kills millions every year. To argue that utility and convenience requires gambling with genocide is reckless evil madness.

To err on the side of pro-life equals a great minority of pregnant women who didn't want to conceive suffering ill health effects from child bearing who would have done so if they wanted a child, and that for a temporary period. Compared to the slaughter of millions of unborn human lives, that's an insignificant burden. Yet President Obama cites back-alley abortion numbers in support of his pro-abortion choice stand. Does that compare to the counter-risk in our uncertainty scenario?

Back-alley abortion numbers were greatly inflated by pro-abortion lobbies, however, US vital statistics do not support the magnitude of problem that abortion lobbyists tend to cite. One sees a number of anecdotal stories, and these are not uniformly empirically confirmed. Many could even be conjured from the air as many bogus 'health' assertions were in Kinsey reports on sexual behavior in the US.

No empirical studies outside of vital statistics measured back alley abortions in the US, however, a study elsewhere countervailed the logic of the argument that statistics suggesting illegal back-alley abortions would increase should abortion be banned in a country. In US history the greatest drop in illegal abortion deaths came after penicillin was developed, and dropped over the years as its disciplined use in health care increased.

The range in numbers of women recorded to have died from illegal and legal abortions between 1940 and 1980 was 1,679 before penicillin was available, incrementally falling to 39 as penicillin and its expanding variants cut mortality and mortality across the board the year before Roe v. Wade decision. The count fell lower still as the years went by with the figure of eight for 1981.

Considering the uncertainty, the numbers of persons lost to illegal abortion (and their reductions either by penicillin or legalization) pale compared to the number of human lives destroyed and persons injured because of the millions of abortions done each year in the US if pro-abortion choice notions of what a life is are incorrect.

CNN seems, under circumstances of its incredible rationale for banning the Catholic Vote ad, to act as agent-censor for the White House. That is an ugly mark against the First Amendment in an increasingly nationalized financial frame of reference.

Let's analogize nicotine. Once addicted, does the nicotine addict buy or smoke cigarettes with unfettered free will?

On other issues of "moral weight" involving health and welfare, President Obama has in the past supported regulation. For example, at Dartmouth in 2007 Obama said he would support a national smoking ban if states and localities did not make progress on their local smoking bans.

Obama's position on smoking bans is predicated on the idea that second hand smoke from the primary actor hurts others' health. And this, with a behavior that nearly everyone has agreed no one is going to totally stop smokers from doing. True, nicotine is the most addictive substance known, even more addictive than the body chemicals involved in sexual behaviors for which pro-life groups argue human beings are responsible with regard to persons reproduced.

Yet in his official actions, Obama disregards the damage and destruction to human lives and bodies from abortion. Failing to recognize that every life in and out of the womb has reality, potentialities, relative utilities and intrinsic worth, Obama distinguishes the unborn (invisible) from the born. It is a false distinction, however, and he signals that it is false by his rhetoric calling abortion a heart rending decision. If the unborn had no worth, the decision would carry no weight. That is why abortion lobbyists equate human unborn life with cancers. It is life-devaluing propaganda.

Is Obama really reaching out to those who work to protect unborn life? Partially born life? So far, it is all words. We haven't heard any proposals for preventing abortion after conception. By his actions in forestalling a national smoking ban until localities have a chance to make progress, Obama shows greater regard for cigarettes after they're lit than unborn and partially born persons after they are conceived by the voluntary, willing, knowing conduct of those who conceive them. Yet he calls the abortions by such persons a rending moral choice.

Even in the stem cell research decision, we hear nothing about how the administration plans to prevent profiteering from embryos by the abortion industry. We hear nothing about how the administration plans to curtail individual profiteering from offering up their human fetuses. We hear nothing of restrictions against the sort of developments imagined in Plato's Republic.

When will reality meet with rhetoric on this issue?