The Democratic National Convention is surprising even mainstream media outlets and political pundits with how far left it went in terms of its unabashed support for and promotion of abortion.
Virtually every speaker made a reference to abortion, to the pro-abortion HHS mandate that violates the religious liberty of church groups and religious employers, and top Democrats from President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden on down to lesser-known elected officials all mentioned their support for abortion. The convention featured the president of the nation’s biggest abortion business, the head of the pro-abortion group NARAL, and celebrities who extolled the virtues of abortion and the Planned Parenthood abortion company.
It was enough for Timothy Cardinal Dolan to admonish the Democratic Party at the close of the abortion festivities last night that they had gone too far.
Carol Platt Liebau, a columnist and talk show host, said it was clear Democrats had turned pro-choice into pro-abortion.
You know that the Democrats’ Abortionpalooza 2012 has gone too far when even committed pro-choicers like Margaret Carlson are deploring Democrats’ abortion extremism. The Obama Democrats have subtly transformed their party’s view on abortion from something that should be legal, though undesirable, to something that should, it seems, be almost celebrated. Perhaps that’s not surprising, given the President’s history of pro-abortion extremism, which includes actively opposing the Born Alive Infant Protection Act — intended to save babies who are born alive after attempted abortion fails.
Yes, she’s a Democrat, so Margaret Carlson must make a ritual incantation of Todd Akin’s name. But she should be honest enough to admit that almost the entire Republican Party has repudiated Akin and his position; by contrast, it appears the President’s brand of abortion extremism has become mainstream in his party. Including the heads of Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League as convention speakers suggested that there’s a substantial portion of the Democrat base that — in contrast to Carlson — is actively “pro-abortion,” rather than simply “pro-choice.”
Carol Tobias, President of National Right to Life, said the Democratic convention made the presidential choice crystal clear, in an email to LifeNews.
Beginning with an unapologetically pro-abortion platform and ending with the nomination of the most pro-abortion President this country has ever seen, the 2012 Democratic National Convention was truly an abortion convention. With the invitation of speakers such as Nancy Keenan and Cecile Richards, the DNC proudly showed their dedication to an extreme no-limits abortion policy.
Barack Obama has never wavered from his pro-abortion views, despite how far out of touch they are with mainstream Americans. His Administration has relentlessly attacked the pro-life position, and has fought all protections for unborn children, even for those in the sixth month or later who are capable of feeling excruciating pain during abortions, or for the unborn girls who will be aborted merely because they are girls.
Polling has shown time and again that most Americans, and most women, support protections for unborn children and their mothers; a position that is not shared by the current administration or the Democratic Party.
And Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review also put the abortion-palooza into perspective.
They seem to think it’s a political winner. It’s a marked change from eight years ago, when many Democrats expressed grave anxiety about the political damage the party’s position on abortion was doing it.
The existence of those doubts could be inferred even before the election. At their convention in Boston, neither the presidential nominee (John Kerry) nor the vice-presidential nominee (John Edwards) mentioned abortion or “the right to choose” — a departure from the practice of the three previous conventions.
On Election Day, President Bush won with the support of 80 percent of the 22 percent of voters who cited “moral values” as the most important reason for their decision. Partly for this reason, many prominent Democrats went public with their concerns.
I wrote about their reaction to Kerry’s defeat in my book The Party of Death:
Post-election analysis by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg fingered abortion as one reason white Catholics had left the Democrats. . . .
A few weeks after the election, [Kerry] addressed a gathering of liberals. The president of Emily’s List asked him about the party’s future. Kerry, Newsweek reported, “told the group they needed new ways to make people understand they didn’t like abortion. Democrats also needed to welcome more pro-life candidates into the party, he said. ‘There was a gasp in the room,’ says Nancy Keenan, the new president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.”
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The Democrats of 2012 do not seem to have any such worries about becoming too closely associated with abortion.
Conservative speech-writer Peggy Noonan summed it up:
The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I’ve never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.
And therein lies the selection for Americans. Do they want a president and a political party whose persona is abortion, or a president who supports common sense pro-life laws and gives unborn children a chance, and a party whose official position calls on protecting unborn children.
