For many pro-lifers, the abortion issue comes first at the voting booth.
And the contrast between the two leading political parties could not be clearer. Democrat leaders have adopted an increasingly radical pro-abortion position that supports unrestricted abortions up to birth and calls to force taxpayers to pay for them.
It’s alienating voters, and pro-life leaders who are Democrats have been vocal about their disgust with the party’s allegiance to the billion-dollar abortion industry, rather than its own members. They have been urging fellow Democrats to raise their voices, too.
But some are compromising.
A few pro-life Democrats told the Catholic News Agency this week in Iowa that they plan to vote for a pro-abortion presidential candidate in November.
Kathy Richardson, a pediatric nurse practitioner in Carroll, Iowa, said she believes that life begins at conception and abortion is “awful.” Still, she is supporting Joe Biden for president, according to the report.
Richardson said the government “shouldn’t be telling women what to do for their body and health.” She also claimed that late-term abortions are rare and often health-related – though abortion providers and pro-abortion researchers admit this is not true.
Biden, Richardson’s choice, supports abortion on demand and wants to force taxpayers to fund them. Though he is Catholic, Biden has a consistent pro-abortion record, including supporting President Barack Obama’s leadership as the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history.
Another Catholic, Carlos Garrido, told CNA that Bernie Sanders is his choice. He claimed that most of Sanders’ policies line up with Catholic social teachings.
“Maybe not the abortion one, but if he’s checking off everything else except for one, I think that’s a lot better than a candidate who only checks off one,” Garrido said.
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Sanders’ views on abortion are, perhaps, the most radical of all the presidential candidates, though all the top Democrat contenders support unrestricted taxpayer-funded abortions up to birth. In September during the CNN climate town hall, Sanders went further by arguing for more abortions as a population control measure.
Here’s more from the report:
Garrido acknowledged Sanders’ abortion support wouldn’t square with Church teaching but said that the provision of contraceptives in Sanders’ health plan would reduce abortions. The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is immoral.
“I realize that that’s not ethical,” Garrido said of abortion, “but I think it’s important to address the problems of the human beings that are here now that are suffering, and then to focus on the problems of beings that have the potentiality of becoming human beings.”
“Maybe I divert a little bit from the Church on that aspect,” Garrido said, citing his concern with addressing “suffering that is here now” and that “29,000 kids are still dying every day from preventable causes.”
He did not seem to realize that unborn babies are suffering here and now, too. Nearly 1 million are aborted every year in America.
Meanwhile, other pro-life Democrats have been speaking out strongly against the party’s growing abortion extremism.
Lizzy Dowd, a pro-life Democrat and Catholic student at Drake University in Des Moines, told CNA that she is advocating for pro-life language in her party platform.
“If we as Democrats are going to uphold the dignity of the person at the border, and inmates on death row, and the homeless and those struggling in poverty, then it only makes sense to uphold the life and the dignity of that child in the womb as well,” she said.
Dowd urged pro-life Democrats to take a stand and stop supporting candidates who advocate for the killing of unborn babies.
“We can’t continue to allow these extremist pro-abortion candidates into office, and keep thinking they’re going to make our culture more pro-life, because you can’t make the culture more pro-life while still allowing these very extreme abortion policies like late-term abortion and partial-birth abortion,” she said.
Kristen Day, the president of Democrats for Life of America, also is a leading voice for change in the Democratic Party. In a recent column for USA Today, she urged pro-life Democrats to take a stand.
“The pro-life movement today is more inclusive than ever. The Democratic Party and its presidential candidates — less so,” she wrote. “I want my party back.”
