Rep. Dan Lipinski’s win in Tuesday’s Democratic primary election was a huge victory for the pro-life movement and for the majority of Americans who support common-ground pro-life policies – one in which Susan B. Anthony List was honored to play a part. It could even save the Democratic Party’s future, if the right lessons are learned.
SBA List knows Dan Lipinski very well. He is a pro-life legend. He serves alongside another pro-life hero, Republican Congressman Chris Smith, as co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. He is the lead co-sponsor of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act and was a speaker at the 2018 Chicago March for Life. In 2010, he stood firm against Obamacare’s expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion, even under intense pressure from party leaders to give in, which took incredible courage under fire.
Lipinski isn’t one to do the minimum and hope to avoid being noticed. He’s a true leader on the life issue and doesn’t apologize for it – so, when he came under attack for his principles yet again in this heated primary, we couldn’t sit back and let it happen.
SBA List went all in. Our team of 70 canvassers, including SBA List staff and students from nearby universities, headed to Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District and spent the final days of the race visiting 17,000 pro-life Democratic households in the district. This was part of a six-figure get-out-the-vote effort that, overall, reached more than 23,000 pro-life Democratic primary voters ahead of Election Day.
Among the Democratic primary voters we targeted in IL-03, 64 percent said they oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, and 58 percent committed to voting for Lipinski, compared to 8 percent voting for Newman or pulling the GOP ballot (24 percent were undecided, and 9 percent refused). It was these pro-life Democratic voters who helped provide the margin of victory in this close race.
Lipinski’s win makes all the more pressing the need to address the rift within the Democratic Party over abortion. One political reporter tweeted before the election that the pro-life Democrat “risks excommunication from his own party for apostasy.” As if to underscore how acrimonious this rift has become, Lipinski’s pro-abortion challenger stated while the votes were still being counted that she “would like Mr. Lipinski to have a very painful evening.”
While there is no evidence Lipinski’s win was “painful” for him, it is abundantly clear that an average of 15,000 unborn babies will suffer painful late-term abortions more than halfway through pregnancy every year until pro-abortion Democrats stop blocking the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act from becoming law.
It is also clear that the temptation to get distracted by a few narrowly-won elections here and there would only postpone the painful, but inevitable reckoning that the Democratic Party needs to have. Recent polling shows 25 percent of rank-and-file Democrats self-identify as pro-life. Another NBC reporter noted that the ranks of pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives have severely diminished over the last forty years. Indeed, if Congress looked like America, there would be approximately fifty pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives now instead of three.
Furthermore, several national polls have found that as many as 51 percent of Democrats support limiting abortion after five months. Support for this compassionate legislation is strong among traditional Democratic voter groups and especially high among millennials (78 percent), African-Americans (70 percent), and Hispanics (57 percent). The two-thirds of voters our team met who oppose taxpayer funding of abortion likewise are right on par with polling of all voters, but eliminating the pro-life Hyde Amendment that keeps tax dollars out of the abortion industry is now a plank of the Democratic Party platform. At the national level, the party is doing its best to shoot itself in the foot by driving away all these voters looking for someone like Dan Lipinski to represent them.
The pro-life exodus from the Democratic Party hasn’t happened because the American people changed, but because the party changed. It happened because extreme pro-abortion lobbying groups like NARAL and their ideological allies in party leadership gained sway and refused to tolerate any uppity pro-life Democrats voting their conscience on popular legislation. It happened because of bully tactics, such as the disgraceful treatment the great pro-life Democrat Robert Casey, Sr. – known for being an eloquent defender of the unborn – received when he was barred from speaking at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. It’s no wonder we hear reports of old-school, blue collar, pro-life Democrats calling it quits.
We are so glad Dan Lipinski fights on. As tough as it is to be a pro-life Democrat in Congress right now, Lipinski’s resolve to stand by his pro-life principles is tougher – and we are a better nation because of it. We could use thousands more of him. May Lipinski’s victory illuminate the way forward for the Democratic Party. Protecting the most innocent and vulnerable is a bipartisan cause, and we at SBA List long to see that reflected in both major parties once again.
Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List.
