If it was not clear already that the Democratic Party is firmly the party of abortion, the first 2020 primary debate should remove all doubt.
The candidates beamed with pride Wednesday evening as they highlighted their years of abortion advocacy. They became noticeably animated just thinking about it. And the candidates were not the only ones who experienced a visible thrill talking about all that access to abortion. The audience loved it, too. In fact, the 2020 candidates’ salutes to terminated pregnancies received a total of five ovations throughout the evening.
The first moment came with former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who said that healthcare “also has to mean that every woman can make her own decisions about her own body and has access to the care that makes that possible.”
The audience broke into enthusiastic applause.
The next moment occurred when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said that it, “should not be an option in the United States of America for any insurance company to deny a woman coverage for their exercise of their right of choice.”
The audience broke into applause.
The governor continued, saying, “I am the only candidate here who has passed a law protecting a woman’s right of reproductive health in health insurance … we’ve got to have access for everyone.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar was next up after Inslee. She said with a broad smile, “I just want to say, there’s three women up here that have fought pretty hard for a woman’s right to choose.”
She had to wait a second for the sound of applause to die down.
Then there was former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who said he believes not only “reproductive freedom,” but also in “reproductive justice,” whatever the hell that means.
“[W]hat that means,” he tried to explain, “is that just because a woman, or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose. And so I absolutely would cover the right to have an abortion.”
“More than that, everybody in this crowd and watching at home knows that in our country today, a person’s right to choose is under assault in places like Missouri, in Alabama, in Georgia. I would appoint judges to the federal bench that understand the precedent of Roe v. Wade and will respect it,” he said.
He was unable to finish his thought on account of all the applause.
Castro concluded once the noise died down, “in addition to that, make sure that we fight hard as we transition our healthcare system to one where everybody can get and exercise that right.”
Lastly, there was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who declined to say whether there should be any limits at all on abortion.
“I would make certain that every woman has access to the full range of reproductive health care services, and that includes birth control, it includes abortion, it includes everything for a woman,” she said. “We now have an America where most people support Roe v. Wade. We need to make that a federal law.”
The audience roared its approval.
If you are a pro-life Democrat, I am not sure where you go now. Because you are certainly not welcome in the Democratic Party, that much is clear.
