Pro-Life Democrats Urge Party to Drop Embrace of Abortion

A coalition of pro-life Democrats is urging the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to disavow the party’s platform that embraces abortion on demand.

Democrats for Life has organized a group of more than 100 Christians, including pastors and religion professors, in a call for the DNC to rescind its support for taxpayer funding of abortion.

“We call upon you to recognize the inviolable human dignity of the child, before and after birth,” the pro-life Democrats wrote in a letter to the DNC platform committee, reported the Associated Press (AP). “We urge you to reject a litmus test on pro-life people of faith seeking office in the Democratic Party.”

The Democrats’ 2020 platform states the party will ensure Planned Parenthood is fully funded with taxpayer dollars, and that low-income women will be able to obtain abortions at taxpayer expense:

Like the majority of Americans, Democrats believe that every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion. We will restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides vital preventive and reproductive health care for millions of women, especially low-income women and women of color, and LGBTQ+ people, including in underserved areas. Democrats oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to women’s reproductive health and rights. We will repeal the Hyde Amendment, and protect and codify Roe v. Wade.

Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, and Tennessee Rep. John DeBerry, a pastor who was removed from the Democrat ballot after voting against pro-abortion positions, are among the signatories of the letter, noted AP.

Democrats for Life also opposed the 2016 Democrat platform which, with Hillary Clinton as the 2020 presidential nominee, reflected the party’s first full embrace of abortion on demand.

Kristen Day, the group’s executive director, said the coalition’s letter this year is “a much bigger effort.”

She told AP the Democrats’ stated intention to codify Roe v. Wade “would just massively damage relationships with religious voters who don’t necessarily want to see that.”

“It’s hugely important for the campaign and Vice President Biden to understand the importance of this vote,” Day said. “It shouldn’t be taken for granted.”

Biden, who professes to be a Catholic, boasted during a debate in March that he has a 100 percent rating from abortion political advocacy group NARAL.

Nevertheless, his campaign published an “Agenda for the Catholic Community” in which the presumptive nominee states:

I’m a practicing Catholic. I believe faith is a gift. And the first obligation we all have is, “Love your God,” the second one is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” … Treat people with dignity. Everyone’s entitled to dignity, that’s a basic tenet in my household.

After flip-flopping several times on whether he supports the Hyde Amendment, a longstanding popular provision attached to spending bills that bars taxpayer funding of abortion, Biden succumbed to pressure from the abortion industry and agreed to work for its repeal.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, published an update on the impact of the Hyde Amendment this week.

Michael J. New, Ph.D. wrote he estimates “the Hyde Amendment  saved 63,549 lives in 2016; 63,549 lives in 2017; 59,707 lives in 2018; 60,067 lives in 2019; and 29,713 lives in 2020 (as of July 1).”

“Overall, I now estimate that the Hyde Amendment has saved a total of 2,409,311 lives since 1976,” New observed.

According to a Marist poll released in January, 60 percent of Americans “oppose” or “strongly oppose” using taxpayer dollars to pay for a woman’s abortion, including 37 percent of those identifying as “pro-choice,” 35 percent of Democrats, and 55 percent of independents.

In July, Biden finally revealed his health plan would enshrine Roe v. Wade into the Constitution and force taxpayers to fund abortion.

DNC chairman Tom Perez said even in 2017 there is no room in his party for pro-life individuals.

“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” Perez said, as HuffPost reported. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”

In an AxiosOnHBO interview with Jonathan Swan in March, Perez rebuked Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who said about Perez’s stance on shutting the door to pro-life Democrats that it “weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.”

“Well, actually the majority of Catholics voted for Democrats in 2016,” Perez shot back during the Axios interview when reminded of Dolan’s comment.