A new Marist poll shows a sharp jump in the percentage of Democrats that identify as pro-life, compared to just a month ago. The numbers are impressive: 34 percent of them now identify as pro-life, up from 20 percent, with a simultaneous drop in pro-choice identification from 75 to 61 percent.
Democrats who are ideologically committed to abortion rights as a defining value of their party, Democrats happy to have the party in lockstep with groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood, are being told not to panic, that this is just a meaningless statistical blip. But is it?
No holds barred abortion advocates should panic. As New York and liberal copycat states rush to enshrine extreme abortion license into state statutes, their abortion wish list is being exposed like so much dirty laundry. And regular good-hearted Americans are wincing at the sight.
After the panic subsides, the Democratic Party should examine how far their policies have diverged from mainstream opinion, even as they are being egged on by their hard left-wing to double down and press harder on abortion at the state level.
It was New York state that quickly codified the abortion free-for-all into a bill and passed it with unseemly celebration. When lawmakers in other states tried to follow suit, they faced follow up questions about just what making abortion legal through all 40 weeks of pregnancy looks like in action. Some of them answered honestly. Yes, it means that a woman carrying a fully developed baby can choose abortion for her child, defined now in New York as a “fundamental right,” up through her due date if her health is threatened or the child is non-viable. And yes, maternal “health” includes any factor, emotional, social, and psychological, that she thinks may limit her well-being. As for fetal viability, there is no legal standard for this. The determination of whether a baby is disabled and whether the disability is life-limiting is left up to the abortionist, who has been hired to eliminate the child, not to advocate for its acceptance into the human family.
The polling reflects the fact that Americans are listening to all this and putting two and two together. They increasingly reject the pro-choice label when the “choice” in question includes the legal and direct killing of an unborn child whose mother could just as easily deliver the baby and give him or her up for adoption.
They understand that a pregnancy can be ended in two ways in the third trimester, killing or a live birth, and that any humane law should insist on a solution that honors both patients, not just the mother. They also seem to be rejecting the idea that a vague label of fetal disability should constitute a death sentence, carried out without any safeguards or protections against the natural human temptation to eliminate the “imperfections” in our lives.
Then, of course, there is the issue of Democrats’ wholesale refusal of legal protection to babies who are accidentally born alive during an abortion. If Democrats are wondering how regular Americans are taking this in, a conversation overheard in my kitchen just yesterday might be illustrative.
My 19-year-old college freshman and his 24-year-old brother were discussing what’s involved in “born alive” legal protection.
“It means,” explained the 19-year-old, “that a baby who is born alive while an abortionist is trying to kill it should be treated in the exact same way as a baby whose parents want him.”
“This must be pretty rare?” my older son said.
“Yeah, I guess, but still. It’s only fair to treat both babies the same,” the younger one countered.
Conversations like this, among two young men, would have been unlikely before the Democrat’s push to codify extreme abortion license into state law. Americans would have simply assumed that once a baby is breathing and wriggling in front of nurses and doctors, the medical ethics of the situation would require them to assist the infant, even if they were busy trying to end her life a few moments earlier. But no.
Americans are now learning that being “pro-choice” isn’t what it used to be. So, too, are everyday Democrats, who are properly recoiling in revulsion over the hard left’s uncompromising and unmerciful vision of abortion rights.
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie is a Policy Advisor for The Catholic Association.
