It is rare to see a swing in public opinion like the one we recently saw on abortion. Each January for 11 years, the Knights of Columbus have released Marist polling on Americans’ attitudes toward abortion. But this year, following the rash of abortion extremism on the state and national level they decided to redo the polling in February.
They found that Americans went from 55 percent who self-describe as pro-choice and 38 percent who self-describe as pro-life, to a 47-47 split. This is the first time in close to a decade that those numbers have reached a tie.
The shift in attitude was seen particularly among Democrats, whose party leaders have lately been promoting abortion up until birth, and even post-birth infanticide. In February, 34 percent of Democratic respondents identified as pro-life, up from 20 percent just one month earlier. And 64 percent of Democrats responded that they would limit abortion to, at most, the first three months of pregnancy.
It is difficult to understand the radical position of Democratic leadership on abortion when more than half of their constituents disagree. But it might shed some light on the matter if we follow the money.
In New York State, abortion giant Planned Parenthood played a key role in the passage of the “Reproductive Health Act,” which removes abortion, including the forced abortion of a pregnant woman’s baby, from the state’s criminal code. For years, Planned Parenthood had highlighted the legislation as a top priority. After the bill was defeated repeatedly by pro-life members of both political parties, the abortion industry worked hard to defeat the ones who stood in the way. When the bill passed this year, both the local and national Planned Parenthood celebrated their morbid victory.
Meanwhile in Virginia, state delegate Kathy Tran, D-Fairfax, was videotaped at a subcommittee hearing pushing her bill, which would allow abortion up until birth, even when a woman is in labor. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, also a Democrat, not only defended Tran’s bill but took it a step further by seemingly defending infanticide in an interview. They likely got their talking points from Planned Parenthood, the same place from which they received a combined $2 million-plus in campaign contributions.
In the beautiful state of Vermont, the Planned Parenthood affiliate bragged that they helped draft the state legislation that has been described as going even further than New York’s.
The link between the taxpayer-funded abortion giant and these abortion bills is a pattern we see in other states too, such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island. But it is not just on the state level that Planned Parenthood is forcing Democratic leadership into a position way out of line with their constituents.
In the House of Representatives, the Democratic Party has blocked a multitude of requests for a vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. That bill would have legally obligated a physician to provide the same medical care to a baby born alive after a botched abortion as they would to any baby born at the same gestational age. Every single legislative day for about the last month, the Democratic House Leadership has designated someone from their party to shut down the request for a vote on this bill. That type of loyalty was likely bought by the $6.5 million in campaign contributions Planned Parenthood spent to elect a pro-abortion Democratic majority in the House.
In the Senate, all Democratic senators except three (Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., Doug Jones, D-Ala., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.) voted against similar legislation. The senators who voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill that merely seeks to prohibit infanticide, have been given over half a million dollars from Planned Parenthood over the last five years.
Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, Democratic leadership has gone from President Jimmy Carter’s supposed neutrality on abortion, to former President Bill Clinton’s rhetoric of “safe, legal and rare,” to Planned Parenthood’s abortion on demand at all stages.
The majority of Americans from both major parties have strong pro-life tendencies. To keep their votes, the Democrats need to reject abortion fanaticism.
Tom McClusky is president of March for Life Action.
