Joe Biden admitted it first, telling the audience at Friday night’s New Hampshire Democratic presidential debate that, if elected president, he would have a litmus test on abortion for any justice nominated to the Supreme Court. Bernie Sanders went even further, pledging to “never nominate any person to the Supreme Court or the federal courts in general who is not 100 percent pro-Roe v. Wade.”
Their fellow 2020 contender Elizabeth Warren concurred. But it was the billionaire political novice Tom Steyer who put the unspoken reality into words: “We all have the litmus test. Everyone in this row feels the same about Roe v. Wade. Everybody on this stage feels the same way about a woman’s right to choose.”
Steyer’s acknowledgment shocked exactly no one.
Support for abortion “rights” has long been a core tenet of the national Democratic Party. But the power held by pro-abortion activist groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League, EMILY’s List, and Planned Parenthood within the Democratic Establishment has transformed the party of “safe, legal, and rare” during the 1990s into a party unwilling to accept any limits on abortion. Democrats even demanded in their 2016 platform that taxpayers fund this “right.”
On Friday, the same adherence to abortion ideology showcased on the debate stage made an appearance in Middle America. That afternoon, the Kansas House narrowly rejected a proposal to amend the state’s constitution concerning the legislature’s right to regulate abortion.
Anti-abortion Kansans had been working on the “Value Them Both” amendment since last year, when the Kansas Supreme Court declared the state’s constitution, which was adopted more than 150 years ago, somehow included a fundamental right to abortion.
The state court’s decision, Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt, adopted an even more expansive view of abortion “rights” than that established by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade under our federal Constitution and later modified in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Under Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt, many common-sense laws that garner overwhelming bipartisan support, such as funding restrictions, parental notification requirements, and informed consent and waiting period provisions, risk constitutional challenge. The Value Them Both amendment would reverse Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt and leave the lawmaking to the legislature by providing “to the extent permitted by the constitution of the United States,” the ability to “pass laws regarding abortion.”
Amending the Kansas constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and the House, at which point the amendment is placed on the ballot for residents to decide by a majority vote. The proposed amendment cleared the Kansas Senate Jan. 29 on a 28-12 vote. All of the chamber’s Democrats voted in opposition to the bill, along with state Sen. John Skubal, a Republican. But the House came up shy of the 84 votes needed to pass the amendment, with a final tally of 80-43. Four Republicans voted no, and not one Democrat voted in favor of the amendment.
Such lock-step voting by Democrats at the national level might not be surprising given the stranglehold the abortion lobby holds over the Democratic National Committee. But something is amiss when even in Kansas, not a single Democrat votes in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment that doesn’t itself limit abortion — it merely ensures that the legislature retains its lawmaking powers to pass laws within the confines of Supreme Court precedent.
And something is really amiss when four of the Democrats who refused to support the constitutional amendment, Reps. John Alcala, Tom Burroughs, Stan Frownfelter, and Kathy Wolfe Moore, had previously voted to ban live dismemberment abortions — the actual statute that spawned the Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt case. And two more Kansas House Democratic holdouts, Reps. Tim Hodge and Jeff Pittman, had voted in favor of a 2017 law requiring that abortion providers disclose their credentials to patients. Yet not one of these Democrats voted to place the constitutional amendment on the ballot.
This speaks volumes. While the national party previously tolerated anti-abortion Democrats at the state and local levels, the demands of the abortion lobby and liberal leaders, such as EMILY’s List-endorsed Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, dictate their own litmus test. To be a good Democrat in 2020, one must vote against common-sense amendments and support pro-abortion judicial litmus tests — conscience be damned.
Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct professor for the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.
