How Radical on Abortion Are They?

With all this talk about Barack Obama allowing nominally pro-life Bob Casey to speak at the Democrat convention and with journalists pushing the motif of the Democratic Party’s success in wooing evangelicals, one thing can get lost.

The Democratic Party has further embraced abortion on demand.

Here’s my argument. The three leaders of the Democratic Party are Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Howard Dean. They have gone past what recent Democratic leaders have been willing to do on the life issue. Remember, Bill Clinton famously posited that he wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Everyone applauded him for finding a middle ground, even though he really just meant it to stay legal and didn’t give a whit about it being rare as long as the abortion industry money kept filling the coffers. But for years, Democrats wisely adopted the “personally opposed” mantra as an offshoot of that theory to confuse voters. It was a thread-the-needle political move. Their collective shake of the head over abortion was at least a head nod to pro-lifers that abortion is not a good thing.

But what Democrats are saying now is very different.

In her now infamous interview, Pelosi, on the most highly rated weekend news program in the country, attempted what amounts to a theological defense of abortion. In part, she was positing that the Catholic Church doesn’t have a clear teaching on this issue. So she’s not even admitting that she sees anything negative or sinful in abortion.

Barack Obama is even worse. He has arguably referred to it as a good.

“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

That is not a “personally opposed” deal. A man who’s running for President of the United States said he would be complicit in the murder of his own grand daughter. Not only is he saying that he would let his daughter make a choice, he’s saying “I don’t want her punished with a baby.” He’s telling us that he would counsel abortion for his own daughter as a baby would be a punishment.

Now, this might be just two politicians accidentally saying what they really believe but it’s a clarifying trend.

In fact, the Chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, served on the board of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England for five years. As a medical student, Dean did his OB-GYN rotation at a Planned Parenthood clinic. According to CNSNews, Dean also continued as a physician at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Burlington after his internship ended.

The divide between the two parties has never been wider, especially on the social issues like abortion. Abortion is not considered something to worry about for Democrats. Abortion is at least a morally neutral act if not a good, according to the Democratic Party of today.

At one point I had hoped that perhaps the Democratic Party would seek to woo pro-life voters by putting up real pro-life candidates in increasing numbers. We are very far from that. The Republicans are now in a battle of wills on this issue with the Democratic Party. Who will blink first? The answer might scare pro-lifers. Think of this, there was ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that Obama would pick a pro-life Vice President. Nobody even mentioned the possibility. But pro-life Republicans are on pins and needles praying that John McCain doesn’t do something stupid by picking a pro-choice Vice President.