Straightforward: take one eight-month-old baby, pierce its skull with a scalpel, vacuum out its brains until its skull collapses - and, hey, hope! Change we can believe in. Obama unapologetically reiterated his pro-abortion stance.

The principal of Notre Shame, as genuine Catholics now call it, Father John I Jenkins, CSC - the most despised priest in the Catholic world - tried his best to put a good face on Obama's visit and his derisory honorary degree. Outside, among the protesters arrested was Norma McCorvey - "Roe" in the Roe v Wade case in the US Supreme Court in 1973 which introduced the permissive abortion law in America which she now deplores.

You could not ask for a more striking...

Straightforward: take one eight-month-old baby, pierce its skull with a scalpel, vacuum out its brains until its skull collapses - and, hey, hope! Change we can believe in. Obama unapologetically reiterated his pro-abortion stance.

The principal of Notre Shame, as genuine Catholics now call it, Father John I Jenkins, CSC - the most despised priest in the Catholic world - tried his best to put a good face on Obama's visit and his derisory honorary degree. Outside, among the protesters arrested was Norma McCorvey - "Roe" in the Roe v Wade case in the US Supreme Court in 1973 which introduced the permissive abortion law in America which she now deplores.

You could not ask for a more striking antithesis than this woman being arrested outside the university while Jenkins and the Vatican II "Catholics" inside welcomed and feted the United States' leading proponent of abortion. However, like so many other Obama initiatives this month, this event has blown up in his face. Such has been the focus on abortion since Obama courted this controversy that American opinion has finally experienced a revulsion.

For the first time since Gallup began to survey attitudes on abortion in the United States in 1995, a majority of respondents now identify themselves as pro-life. The figures in this weekend's poll are: pro-life 51 per cent; pro-abortion 42 per cent. Perhaps Barack Obama has a role dictated by destiny after all.