Last night 219 members of in the House of Representatives proved what many of us have suspected for decades: Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton are the twin pillars of the Democratic Party. The refusal to prohibit federal funding of abortions in the health care bill shows that the Democratic leadership is either remarkably dedicated to the principle that woman should have the right to use federal funds to kill their unborn children or they are the dumbest politicians in history. However, if they truly support abortion on demand they should stand by that conviction no matter how many elections it will cost them. And as history has shown, it has cost them plenty—and will cost them many more.
This wasn’t always the case. The GOP was once the party open to those who supported abortion rights while the Democrats were generally populated with pro-lifers. During the primary race for the 1988 Presidential election, five of the Democratic contenders—Jesse Jackson, Joe Biden, Paul Simon, Dick Gephardt, and Al Gore—had previously opposed abortion. So did Bob Kerry. And Dick Durbin. And Bill Clinton. Even Ted Kennedy had claimed that the “legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life.”
From 1976 to 1984 the Democratic Party platform also included language that hedged on abortion: “We fully recognize the religious and ethical concerns which many Americans have about abortion.” That language disappeared in 1988, along with the pro-life convictions of the party leadership. By 1992 the Democrats had so thoroughly embraced abortion that Pennsylvania Governor Robert P. Casey was not allowed to speak at the convention because he didn’t support the platform’s abortion plank. The party’s leaders feared that letting Casey speak would draw attention to the fact that pro-lifers weren’t welcome at a time when 61 percent of pro-life Democrats were unaware that their party disagreed with them.
When Democratic voters realized what was happening, a seismic shift occurred. After having controlled Congress for forty years, the Democratic Party lost its dominance over the legislature. Since 1995, when Democrats lost both the House and Senate for a period of twelve years, the party has become even more entrenched in its support of abortion—and has removed all possibility of taking the high ground away from the GOP. The Democrats continue to support unfettered access to abortion even as it becomes an overwhelming political liability.
The Democrats cheered when the Supreme Court legalized with Roe v. Wade and secured abortion on demand with Doe v. Bolton. But the effect on their party has been almost completely negative. By taking the issue away from the states and putting it in the hands of the federal government, the Supreme Court ensured that a legislator’s views on the issues would become a consideration in every Congressional election. For the past two decade, the issue has been one of the most decisive in determining voting pattern and cost them the support of previously loyal constituencies. Many Catholics and evangelical Christians who had supported the Democratic Party since the days of FDR now refuse to vote for what Ramesh Ponnuru has dubbed “the party of death.”
Fortunately for the Democrats, many people are still unaware that abortion on demand is the law of the land. Fewer still are aware, despite the issue being a major point of discussion in the recent health care debate, of the radically pro-abortion position supported by the Democratic Party. Although the country is still divided about abortion, polls consistently show that only 26 percent support the Democrat’s abortion on demand position and that 61 percent oppose federal funding for the procedure. Does the average Democrat—particularly the Catholic and evangelicals in the party—realize that their party’s leadership and the majority of their elected representatives opposes all such limits—even those such as partial-birth abortion that border on infanticide?
Perhaps its better for them to remain ignorant for any opposition would prove impotent. Party leaders and strategists know that while they can ignore the pro-life contingent they must pledge their sacred allegiance to the abortion lobby. They realize to even suggest that Democratic legislators might want to temper their pro-abortion stance would send NARAL and NOW and other pro-abortion groups into a frenzy. So they cower and submit and deny the obvious political liabilities in order to pacify the extreme factions of the party.
In the meantime, many Democrats in Congress—from the handful of pro-lifers to numerous moderate pro-choicers—secretly pray that the Roberts Court will overturn Roe and send the issue back to the states. If the unconstitutional precedent is finally overturned the Democrat leadership will feign outrage and fume about back alley abortions—but they know that nothing will really change. Abortion will still be available in California and New York and banned—as it effectively is now—in South Dakota and Mississippi. But they’ll have gained something that will elude them now and in the future: A chance to gain the loyalty and respect of Americans who care about the civil rights of the unborn.
March 22nd, 2010 | 9:35 am
For many years I’ve had very detailed discussions with liberal Democrats about abortion. I made a point of keeping my arguments non-religious, and simply pointing to natural rights and the continuum from conception to natural death of every person.
Nope. They often end up denying the existence of natural rights. In many cases, they even deny that they themselves have any natural right to life. All that comes from society through government you see. It’s al a “construct.”
And then they attack the fetus as a “clump of cells,” even when presented with the unique identity encoded in the DNA of every new life, including substantial elements of intelligence and personality.
Libertarians, of course, will argue that the woman’s right to manage her own body is the determining factor. But there’s no right to take an innocent life, especially one for which you are steward.
We shouldn’t be surprised by what is happening to American culture and society. Once the idea spreads that there can be and is a right to kill unborn persons, pretty much anything can be justified.
But maybe it’s something we were bound to face because of the power of human forgetfullness over time. This is the central problem of our time. Congress failed us yesterday. Now it rests with the people.
March 22nd, 2010 | 11:16 am
Did i miss something? The house passed the bill WITH provisions to prohibit use of federal funds for abortion. What are you referring to here?
It’s sad that the Republicans tried to stop the health care bill because of “abortion-on-demand”. They obviously don’t believe in ‘health care-on-demand’ either, so as long as infants and children just slowly waste away from lack of insurance, that’s okay. At least they weren’t aborted against God’s will. If they die of severe dehydration from a stomach bug…well, we all know God works in mysterious ways…especially if you’re poor and uninsured.
Hoo-ray for the Health Care Bill!
March 22nd, 2010 | 11:22 am
In April 2004 I wrote a letter to the Patriot, a student newspaper published by the student Democratic Party organization at Boston College. I wrote it at the request of the Editor, a student in one of my courses. It think it is worth posting here. The letter follows:
_______
In a recent conversation with you I described myself as a life long registered, but alienated, Democrat. The watershed event in my alienation was the refusal of the managers of the 1992 Democratic Presidential Convention to allow Robert Casey twice elected as Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, the fifth largest state, to speak at the Convention. The refusal was because of Casey’s pro-life stance. I told you Casey was my kind of Democrat, and I interpreted the treatment he received from the convention managers as indicating that my political party had no place for me if I did not conform to, or at least remain silent in the face of, the abortion position adopted as part of the Democratic party platform. You asked me if I would write a letter to the Patriot on this matter. Here it is.
The position adopted by the Democratic Convention in 1992 was the extreme absolutist position on abortion advocated most prominently by the National Abortion Rights Action League [NARAL.] NARAL has since suppressed the word abortion in its official name and now calls itself NARAL Pro-Choice America. The NARAL position is extreme because poll data indicates consistently that on many
abortion related questions the NARAL position is not that held by a majority of the American people. It is however the position of the Democratic Party, and the position of John Kerry who has a 100% NARAL rating. It is also the position of Senator Kennedy and most members of the Massachusetts’ congressional delegation.
I’m sure Governor Casey’s party membership was rooted, as mine is, in Roosevelt’s New Deal, Kennedy’s New Frontier, and Johnson’s Great Society. I’m sure he voted, as I did, for Kennedy, Johnson, McGovern, McCarthy, Carter, Mondale and Dukakis. Nevertheless, Casey’s two terms as Governor and his long service to the party counted for little in the face of his refusal to toe the line on the abortion question. By contrast Bill Clinton did fall into line with NARAL. His views on abortion as Governor of Arkansas had been more moderate and nuanced than those of NARAL, but he scrapped these views and conformed strictly to the NARAL position throughout the eight years of his presidency. Given Clinton’s policy shift, the abortion plank in the Democratic platform, and the Convention’s refusal to allow Casey to speak, I did not vote for Clinton in 1992 or 1996. And, I did not vote for Gore in 2000 for the same reasons.
The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade poisoned American politics and is the remote cause of my alienation. Prior to Roe questions of abortion policy were questions for state governments and handled through the political and legislative processes in the states. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 changed this by inventing an abortion liberty. The court found that the abortion liberty, an aspect of the right of privacy, which Justice Douglas previously located in “the penumbra surrounding the Bill of Rights,” was contained in the substance of the due process clause of the 14th amendment. Lawyers refer to the relevant principle of interpretation as the doctrine of substantive due process. It provides a big opening through which Justices can bring into the constitution things that were not previously considered to be there. Roe was bad constitutional law in the judgment of the most prominent of the nation’s constitutional law experts. But so far it has carried the day, and it has taken the moral question out of the state legislatures where it belonged and made it a national issue.
The fundamental moral problem is that an elective abortion is a decision to end the life of a human being in the womb. The embryo is not potential life. It is a living human being. The political debate should be built upon the frank recognition of this reality. Once this is recognized, the moral and political question becomes when is the deliberate ending of this human life justified, if ever? The position of NARAL is to either deny that the embryo is a human life, or to obscure the humanity of the embryo by careful choice of language and rhetoric. The NARAL position is that the government has no legitimate role to play in the protection of embryonic human life by regulation of abortion. The fundamental political question about what might be the legitimate use of civil power in protecting human life in the womb is foreclosed from the NARAL perspective, and the Democratic Party has largely bought into that point of view. There are many aspects of the Bush Administration’s domestic and foreign policy about which I have reservations and questions, but the fact remains that those of us who believe that abortion is a major moral evil facing the body politic, and who believe also that there must be some role for the use of civil authority to protect life in the womb do not get a hearing in a Democratic administration. In the Bush administration the question can be raised and addressed. This is not a trivial difference for Democrats like me.
Sincerely,
Francis M. McLaughlin
Associate Professor
Department of Economics
March 22nd, 2010 | 12:35 pm
FT might want to reconsider being an extension of the GOP’s self-destructive love affair with message management, the belief that, if the like-minded simply say the same thing in slightly different ways with sufficient passion in a saturated way, that things will improve. Right now, political conservatism is deeply debilitated by this love affair.
March 22nd, 2010 | 1:08 pm
[...] March 22, 2010 by Kathy Ostrowski With the House passage of the health care bill last night, and notwithstanding the worthless executive order, the United States is now dedicated to more abortions– and tax funding of them– under the Obama administration. Read an outstanding piece on how abortion is killing the Democratic party. [...]
March 22nd, 2010 | 1:53 pm
Roe v Wade is the law of the land, and I am tired of our goverment using women’s health care as a wedge issue. I have been a lifelong Democrat, but under president Obama the Democratic Party has chosen to imitate Republican tactics and use women’s reproductive rights as a bargaining tool. Sadly, Democratic women are more loyal to Obama than to the rule of law (Roe) and to the constituents who elected them to office.
Both parties are the same now. They both have anti-woman wackos who call the shots. So why should I vote for Democratic candidates, or donate my money to them? I am tired of being duped.
March 22nd, 2010 | 3:21 pm
As one of the 32 million Americans who do not have health insurance, I thank God the House of Representatives has past this bill.
March 22nd, 2010 | 3:42 pm
greggo As one of the 32 million Americans who do not have health insurance, I thank God the House of Representatives has past this bill.
Why? So that you can be forced to buy health insurance?
(You do understand how it works don’t you? Unless you were so poor that you were already covered under Medicaid, you are being forced to buy a “subsidized” plan. It’s not like you are getting insurance for free.)
March 22nd, 2010 | 4:14 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
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March 22nd, 2010 | 4:31 pm
ria, yes you missed something. Why do you think the Senate would not adopt the anti-abortion language used by the House? Daisy, slavery and segregation were once the “law of the land”. Doesn’t seem like much of an argument to me.
March 22nd, 2010 | 6:17 pm
“Since abortion is such a pressing and controversial issue, it is worth remarking that it does not really matter whether or not one wishes to call the fetus a person. It is alive; it is human; it is an individual. No one can prove that it is not a person, and it need only to be let alone for a while in order to prove to everyone that it is. Moreover, quite apart from whether one does or does not call the fetus a person, willingness to destroy the unborn is willingness to destroy human life. It is only because some wish to kill the fetus that anyone denies this is personal life. People typically find subtle grounds for questioning the personhood of those whom they wish to destroy. It happened before in this country with blacks and native Americans; it is happening now with the unborn.” Grisez and Shaw, “Beyond the New Morality”, 3d Ed. p. 146 The desire to destroy comes first, then the rationalizations.
March 22nd, 2010 | 8:06 pm
ria: The bill that was passed is a radical expansion of federal funding of elective abortion. The status quo is that no federal funds can be used for elective abortions (see http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/healthcare/abortion_funding_102309.pdf ). The Senate bill uses federal funds to pay for elective abortions and to subsidize health plans that cover abortions, and forces Americans to pay for other people’s abortions even if they are morally opposed (see http://www.usccb.org/healthcare/030410facts.pdf ). It does contain some language that places some limitations on which funds can be used in support of elective abortion, but Any use of federal funds would be a change for the worse from the status quo.
March 22nd, 2010 | 9:35 pm
Golly…I didn’t realize how bad the Mexico City Policy was, being an executive order and all, and I missed all that bashing of Republicans for supporting it. Let me see how often Richard Doerflinger opposed it as an executive order.
March 22nd, 2010 | 10:20 pm
“Roe v Wade is the law of the land, and I am tired of our goverment using women’s health care as a wedge issue.”
Now try this:
Dred Scott is the law of the land, and I am tired of our government using property rights as a wedge issue.
March 22nd, 2010 | 10:30 pm
So, under the Democrats’ law, a woman has a right to choose an abortion and have it subsidized, but she doesn’t have the right not to have the health insure that subsidizes the abortion. Thus, there is no obligation for a mother not to kill her child, but there is an obligation for all women everywhere to underwrite the killing. The lesson: a citizen’s obligation to pay for another citizen to kill her offspring is greater than a citizen’s obligation to not kill her offspring.
No wonder they can’t see what marriage is; they don’t even know how mothers ought to treat their children. And yet, by some strange political alchemy, they know precisely what sort of health care you need, your choice be damned.
These folks are one strange group of sick puppies.
March 24th, 2010 | 2:04 am
[...] Roe, Doe, DOA: How Abortion is Killing the Democratic Party (tags: article hisotry abortion democrat editorial politics firstthings joecarter) [...]
March 24th, 2010 | 12:45 pm
What happened to my choice NOT to support abortion? I am now being forced to pay for a practice I consider wrong and unethical.
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