Amid a tense Democratic debate over whether pro-lifers have any place inside the party, Nancy Pelosi delivered a blunt message to her fellow Democrats: Trump won because of the party’s rigid stance on abortion and other social issues.
“You know what? That’s why Donald Trump is president of the United States—the evangelicals and the Catholics, anti-marriage equality, anti-choice. That’s how he got to be president,” Pelosi told the Washington Post. “Everything was trumped, literally and figuratively by that.”
Indeed, the Democrats’ declining performance solely among evangelicals between 2012 and 2016 was enough to cost Hillary Clinton the election, as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote at National Review in December.
In her Washington Post interview, Pelosi urged Democrats to welcome pro-life voters and some candidates. “I grew up Nancy D’Alesandro, in Baltimore, Maryland; in Little Italy; in a very devout Catholic family; fiercely patriotic; proud of our town and heritage, and staunchly Democratic,” Pelosi said. “Most of those people—my family, extended family—are not pro-choice. You think I’m kicking them out of the Democratic Party?”
“Bob Casey—you know Bob Casey—would you like him not to be in our party?” Pelosi said, referring to the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania who sometimes votes pro-life.
Pelosi’s comments were met with criticism from Ilyse Hogue of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “Encouraging and supporting anti-choice candidates leads to bad policy outcomes that violate women’s rights and endanger our economic security,” Hogue told the Post.
Hogue, NARAL’s president, kicked off the current debate by urging opposition to a formerly pro-life Democratic mayoral candidate in Omaha, Nebraska. DNC chair Tom Perez backed the candidate but later said that supporting a right to abortion is a “non-negotiable” issue for Democratic candidates.
At the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Hogue received cheers from the crowd when she gave a speech about how she aborted her first child not for any medical reason but simply because it was an inconvenient time to become a parent. The convention was also the first time that the party platform explicitly called for unlimited federal funding of elective abortions for Medicaid recipients.
Sure, Pelosi sounds inclusive now, but it should not be forgotten that she played a key role in driving pro-life candidates and voters from her party. Pro-life Democrats were largely wiped out of Congress after she forced the 2010 vote on Obamacare, which allowed federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover elective abortions. That vote was a clear-cut case of political murder-suicide if there ever was one.
Then in 2013, when Republicans introduced a ban on abortion after the fifth month of pregnancy following the trial of Kermit Gosnell, an abortion doctor who delivered babies alive before killing them, Pelosi denounced the legislation as “reprehensible.”
Yet Pelosi could not explain the difference between the Gosnell slayings and late-term abortions and invoked her faith to defend her stance on the issue. “As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this,” Pelosi said. “I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics.”
