Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s threat to codify Roe v. Wade may be toothless, but it is a reminder of just how radical the Democratic Party has become on abortion.
Pelosi made the threat in light of the Supreme Court refusing to block Texas’s pro-life “heartbeat bill.” Now, she wants Congress to take up a bill that would legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy and eliminate virtually all restrictions on abortion.
Pelosi’s bill is very similar to the one that failed in Virginia in 2019. You may remember how Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam defended Virginia’s bill at the time: “So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered,” Northam said. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mothers.”
That endorsement of what is essentially infanticide was later overshadowed by Northam’s blackface/KKK yearbook photo, and the bill ended up going nowhere. But congressional Democrats brought their own version of it later that same year. With pro-abortion activists complaining that the Supreme Court is not firmly in their camp, Pelosi is ready to pick that fight again.
It still has little chance of passing. It isn’t clear that the bill would have even 50 votes in the Senate, and it certainly does not have the 60 supporters it would need to overcome a Senate filibuster. But “messaging bills” are almost all Pelosi has been good for since Democrats took back the House, and her message is clear: Unrestricted, unquestioned access to abortion is the position of the Democratic Party.
That is the message from Pelosi. It is the message from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who went as far as to threaten Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh over a case about simply requiring abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges. And it is the message from President Joe Biden, our “deeply Catholic” president who is openly rejecting his Church’s teaching (and basic biology) in his unqualified support of abortion.
The Democratic Party will accept no dissenters when it comes to abortion unless it has no other choice. While West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin may be protected because of his unique circumstances in the party as probably the only Democrat who can hold that seat from an otherwise very conservative state, he remains an outlier, as pro-life former Rep. Dan Lipinski found out when he lost his primary in Illinois in 2020. Pelosi’s posturing is just the latest reminder that the Democratic Party’s radical abortion stance is central to its identity.
