The rhetoric summoning thousands of Pittsburgh pro-lifers to next Monday's "March For Life" in Washington, D.C., is almost as aggressive as the graphic abortion photos I saw Friday on Liberty Avenue.

A press release announcing this year's march included the words "No exceptions! No compromise!", while the 6-foot-high placards with bloody fetuses galvanize Downtown passers-by in an unintended way.

While I agree with the cause and respect such passionate commitment, these more extreme words and actions might be needlessly counterproductive -- especially at a time when substantial progress toward protecting the unborn may finally be at hand. Pro-lifers should consider the example of Samuel Alito.

The inhumanity of the ardently pro-choice crowd was on full and appalling display last week as a few left-wing extremists on the Senate Judiciary Committee treated Alito with about as much respect as they believe should be accorded an undesirable fetus. The U.S. Supreme Court candidate was "wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove" both in withstanding the ugliness and in responding to persistent questions about how he, if confirmed, would handle challenges to Roe v. Wade. He affirmed the importance of legal precedent and judicial caution but refused to consider them completely binding.

Having acquitted himself in stellar fashion, it's likely that Alito will be confirmed. And since none of the rights actually listed in the Constitution is absolute, it's likely that Alito will join an emerging majority of justices willing to allow limits on a controversial right that is merely extrapolated from the Constitution.

Senate Democrats said they grilled Alito to make sure that he was not an extremist but a "mainstream conservative." Not only is Alito within the conservative mainstream, he's simply within the American mainstream. According to numerous national polls available online, up to 69 percent of us oppose "partial-birth" abortions and up to 86 percent oppose all third-trimester abortions. The courts can expect to see more legislation that expresses the people's will.

A passionate anti-abortion advocate might argue that the Supreme Court's upholding of a legislative ban on only some abortions would amount to no triumph at all. Indeed, the "No exceptions! No compromise!" sentiment -- on a press release sent by People Concerned for the Unborn Child, a Pennsylvania grass roots organization -- seems to indicate a determination not to be appeased.

Pro-life Pittsburghers who respond to this call and board buses for Washington next Monday should remember history. Many compromises were necessary before this country ratified the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery -- a frequent analogy for the anti-abortion movement. Plenty of the nation's founders were aware that the presence of slavery in the colonies betrayed their ideals, but to ensure passage of the Constitution, they crafted the 3/5ths Compromise, thereby designating slaves as not fully human.

Over the decades the abolition movement saw both progress and setbacks -- the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the terrible Dred Scott case of 1857. The list of congressional actions and Supreme Court decisions should humble both sides in our current public battle: The "strict constructionists" on the pro-life side need to recognize that flawed practices tainted constitutional ideals from the get-go, and the pro-choice "stare decisis" crowd needs a bracing reminder that not all precedents are worth keeping.

The abortion photos on Liberty Avenue are bracing reminders of a different kind -- that fetuses, like the 19th century's slaves, are recognizably human. People of any moral sensitivity must consider the consequences of the positions they espouse, and the dead form of an 8-week-old fetus is a stomach-churning testament to the outcome of abortion-on-demand.

But people of moral sensitivity might still look away, and those who don't agree with the photos' point could be angered when, instead, they could have been persuaded. A more effective tool is the increasing availability of ultrasound equipment in the region's pro-life pregnancy centers.

Southern slaveholders could mount no more serious argument in favor of their "peculiar institution" than the right to self-government. Fueled by tireless evangelizing of the grass roots and fitful steps forward in the halls of power, public opinion gradually turned against them.

Although "no compromises" rhetoric and bloody photos may rally the troops, what pro-lifers need, as their position strengthens, is the wisdom to increase their numbers.