Beautiful young actress Ashley Judd went to Washington last weekend wearing a crucifix and a trendy little T-shirt that boasted: "THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE."

The Associated Press snapped a photo of Ashley, honored guest of the "March for Women's Lives," which has been widely disseminated on the Internet.

Pro-abortion leaders must be ecstatic. In a sea of angry (Hillary Rodham Clinton), haggard (Cybill Shepherd), and ghoulish (Whoopi Goldberg) women shaking their fists and waving coat hangers, Ashley's pretty smile helped put a softer, gentler, and more glamorous spin on the morbid march for "reproductive rights."

Ashley's message to millions of young American women and girls:

Opposing the partial-birth abortion ban is fun! Morning-after pills are cool! Sex without consequences rules!

One wonders what Ashley's mom, beloved country singer Naomi Judd, must have thought of her daughter traipsing around with abortion rights' militants. Naomi has spoken eloquently for years about how she firmly rejected abortion as an unwed teen and repeatedly witnessed the miracle of life as a labor and delivery nurse. "I've seen ultrasounds…you know that those babies are real," she told TV talk show host Sally Jesse Raphael in 1998.

A few years later, Naomi faced off against Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) on ABC's "Politically Incorrect" and argued for an eminently reasonable 24-waiting period before abortions. Drawing on her nursing experience, Naomi advocated full disclosure of the risks and consequences of abortion—including the use of ultrasound to give women the "whole picture."

Sen. Mikulski growled that it was an "insult" to think that women didn't know what they were doing. Naomi responded that famous abortionist Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, only disavowed his profession after witnessing abortion procedures filmed through ultrasound technology. "Oh, my God in heaven, this is a living human being in its mother's womb," Naomi quoted Nathanson confessing. "[H]e was devastated at what he had done."

Needless to say, neither Naomi nor Dr. Nathanson was welcomed on the dais with Ashley, Whoopi, and Cybill. Neither was Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who committed the shocking sin of letting the truth about abortion slip out in a recent Newsweek interview. The procedure, she said, is about "stopping the process of life…I don't view abortion as just a nothing."

One wonders at the candid conversation Mrs. Heinz Kerry might have had with Rebecca Porter, Florida director of Operation Outcry Silent No More, who recently attended a Kerry campaign event in Tampa, Fla. Porter quietly held a sign that read, "My abortion hurt me." Candidate John Kerry stared at Porter's sign while working a handshake line, but did not address her. Instead, a Kerry campaign staffer grabbed the sign and tore it to pieces.

Emulating the Democratic Party strategy (remember, this is the party that banned pro-life Democrat Bob Casey, the late governor of Pennsylvania, from speaking at its 1992 presidential convention), the free-speech fanatics of the Left did their best to stifle pro-life dissent and voices of conscience at last weekend's march. They shouted down counter-protesters and tried to hide pro-life protest signs by covering them with their profanity-laced placards.

The abortionistas got unexpected help from the Bush administration's National Park Service, which forbade many pro-lifers from displaying graphic posters on adjacent sidewalks.

Nonetheless, the truth keeps slipping out. In Britain, a ground-breaking documentary by filmmaker Julia Black titled "My Foetus" aired last week. Black is pro-choice, but says she "wanted to kick-start debate by allowing both sides…to actually look at what an abortion is."

Her film showed a four-week-old fetus being vacuumed from its mother's womb—as well as images of the broken limbs of 10, 11 and 21-week-old aborted children.

Pro-choice journalist Lauren Booth described her response to the documentary this way:  "My hand flew to my mouth in shock. I swallowed. I didn't want to say it, but the word 'murder' came to my lips."

This is the true face of abortion, Ashley.

Multiply it by 40 million.

The mass destruction of unborn life in the name of feminist rights is not "just a nothing."

Go ask your mom.

Michelle Malkin [email her] is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow's review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website.

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