We are learning all sorts of lessons, very early on, about what President Obama means by “reaching out” to find “common ground” with pro-life Americans. When it came to rescinding the regulation prohibiting federal family-planning money for foreign abortionists, it meant that the president refrained from taking this action on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and waited a day or two to avoid an outright slap in the face to thousands of participants in the annual March for Life.

When it came to choosing the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, an obscure but important officer in charge of defining each administration’s official stance with regard to the Constitution and federal law, the president nominated not simply a supporter of Roe but former NARAL counsel Dawn Johnsen. She believes that pregnancy is the moral equivalent of slavery, and that therefore the anti-slavery 13th Amendment to the Constitution protects abortion on demand. Johnsen made this argument in her best-known legal brief, to the Supreme Court in Webster v. Reproductive Services. Given these views and assuming her confirmation, she will presumably devote roughly the same amount of time to finding common ground with pro-lifers as she will to finding common ground with backers of a restoration of slavery.