It’s hard to say how far Senator Santorum will be able to take his campaign, but we hope it’s far enough that he’ll be able to make a stop here in New York and deliver a major speech in respect of abortion. New York City has emerged as the abortion capital of America, a point that was made in January a year ago at an extraordinary press conference held in Manhattan by a number of the leading clergymen in the city, including the archbishop of the New York, Timothy Dolan,* and the leader of the Agudath Israel of America, Rabbi David Zwiebel. They disclosed the latest findings on abortion rates in the city, including the fact that in 2009 some 41% of pregnancies that did not end in miscarriage were ended by abortion.

The clergymen who met with the press a year ago to speak about this tragedy were not unanimous in their theological views on abortion. Their press conference was not even about whether abortion ought to be legal. It was about the ghastliness of the numbers in the city and the human tragedy it represents. They pointed out that the ratio of pregnancies ended by abortion has been declining in recent years, but only slightly. The figures they disclosed showed that not only are huge numbers of abortions performed in New York but in some sectors of our population, nearly half of all pregnancies are ended by abortionists. Among African-American women the number approaches 60%.

Who is going to address this toll? The headline we put on our editorial a year ago was “Where Is the Mayor?” He has shown that he can speak forcefully on controversies when he wants to. He has made a federal case out of cigarette smoking, French fries, and the Ground Zero mosque. But the 87,273 unborn babies taken by abortion New York in 2009 turned out not to be something by which he is moved. He just doesn’t want to address it. Nor do our two senators, nor the governor. Nor, for that matter, any of the major public officials in the city.

They’re all entitled to their silence, but it adds up to an opportunity for Mr. Santorum, whose pro-life views are so threatening to many that he was mocked on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show for the way he and his wife mourned their son Gabriel, who died shortly after birth. It is the opportunity to come into a city that is the abortion capital of America and explain the cost to our community and our country of the failure to protect, even encourage these pregnancies and embrace the lives that could have been lived. It is a chance to talk about the importance of population growth and its relation to freedom.

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* Shortly to become Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Vatican announced this week.