The Major Media, pro-abortion and pro-Democrat with rare exceptions, are sending distress signals to the current crop of presidential wannabes.
Like Robby the Robot, they warn there is “Danger” in choosing “to support — and in some cases emphasize — a few policies that are deeply unpopular” (to quote David Leonhardt of the New York Times).
Leonhardt did not mention abortion as an example of Democrats’ overreach but abortion is the perfect example of how out of whack Democrats are with the public.
Today Aaron Blake explicitly addresses “Democrats’ leftward shift on third-trimester abortion.” Forget the lame and wholly inaccurate parallel at the end, Blake understands that “Hillary Clinton’s answer at a 2016 debate trended toward what [Bernie] Sanders, [Peter] Buttigieg and [Beto]O’Rourke are saying today.”
Put more directly, in her debate with then candidate Donald Trump, Clinton initially did her best to evade her extremism on abortion. Then, as Blake notes,
But when Donald Trump accused her of supporting abortions in the ninth month, she added: “This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make. And I do not believe the government should be making it.”
Blake bends over backwards to emphasize that neither Sanders, Buttigieg, nor O’Rourke
is explicitly saying, “I support allowing third-trimester abortions” — and, in fact, they seem to be trying hard to avoid doing so. Politicians eschew firm positions and like to reserve some plausible deniability, especially on extremely divisive issues like this. So it’s little surprise that so many of their answers hew to the same talking point.
However, to his credit, Blake then immediately adds
But their answers strongly point in that direction. Indeed, it’s difficult to read them any other way.
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This is a step further from what Blake wrote earlier in the story:
The impression left is that they support women making such decisions even in the third trimester.
We have written about the incredible words about abortion that have come out of the mouths of these three —and what Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand vowed before she pulled out. And, again, to Blake’s credit, he puts them together for the readers of the Washington Post.
Blake observes “the party isn’t totally embracing this issue.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) has said that “there are limits there in the third trimester that are very important.” And the candidates who haven’t weighed in on this issue publicly don’t seem eager to do so. The campaigns of Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) didn’t respond to multiple requests for the candidates’ positions this week.
Klobuchar’s fudging aside, that is likely not the case. If Biden and Senators Warren, Harris and Booker were injected with truth serum, in all likelihood they would agree with Sanders, Buttigieg, and O’Rourke. The difference is not in their positions but in their unwillingness to explicitly take a position supported by a small percentage of Americans.
One other very important point. Blake shrewdly observes that the public hasn’t grown more willing to embrace third-trimester abortions or agree that “abortion should be available to a woman any time she wants one during her entire pregnancy.” But “despite that stasis, the party’s leaders are shifting,” Blake writes.
From abortion “safe, legal and rare” (Bill Clinton’s phony mantra) to abortion on demand. Indeed, as we have documented on numerous occasions, the party now is unwilling to draw the line at birth.
They refuse to allow a vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” both out of a bizarre consistency and out of fear of alienating Planned Parenthood, and NARAL, and EMILY’s List.
Blake concludes
And that’s at least consistent with their rhetoric. If you cast abortion as an issue of women’s rights and say government should stay out of it, setting a time limit essentially acknowledges that abortion becomes problematic at some point. …
Politicians have avoided taking those more absolutist positions for decades, preferring to strike a rhetorical balance for fear of appearing extreme. Increasingly, though, top Democrats aren’t so interested in erring toward the middle.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
