Former Vice President Joe Biden admitted it first, telling the Manchester, New Hampshire, audience at Friday night’s Democratic presidential debate that, if elected president, he would have a litmus test on abortion for any justice nominated to the high court. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders went further, pledging to “never nominate any person to the Supreme Court or the federal courts in general who is not 100% pro-Roe v. Wade.”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar concurred. But it was the billionaire political novice, Tom Steyer, who capsulized the unspoken reality: “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.”
Abortion “rights” have long been a core tenet of the national Democratic Party. But the power held by abortion activist groups, such as NARAL Pro-Choice America, EMILY’s List, and Planned Parenthood, within the Democratic establishment, have successfully transformed the party’s “safe, legal, and rare” mantra of the 1990s to treating abortion as a positive good right up to the moment of birth and demanding in the party’s 2016 platform that taxpayers fund it.
On Friday, the same adherence to abortion ideology showcased on the debate stage made an appearance in mid-America. That afternoon, the Kansas House narrowly rejected a proposal to amend the state’s constitution concerning the legislature’s right to regulate abortion.
Pro-life Kansans had been working on the “Value Them Both” amendment since last year when the Kansas Supreme Court declared the state’s constitution, adopted more than 150 years prior, included a fundamental right to abortion. The state court decision, Hodes v. Nauser v. Schmidt, adopted an even more expansive view of abortion “rights” than established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade under our federal Constitution and later modified in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Under Hodes, many commonsense laws that garner overwhelming bipartisan support, both in Kansas and nationwide, such as funding restrictions, parental notification requirements, and informed consent and waiting period provisions, risk constitutional challenge. The “Value Them Both” amendment would have reversed Hodes and left the lawmaking to the legislature, providing “to the extent permitted by the constitution of the United States, the people, through their elected state representatives and state senators, may 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 on January 29, 2019, on a 28–12 vote. All of the chamber’s Democrats voted in opposition to the bill, along with Republican State Sen. John Skubal. But the House came up shy of the 84 votes needed, with a final tally of 80–43. Four Republicans voted no. Not one Democrat voted in favor of the “Value Them Both” amendment.
Such lockstep 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, in Kansas, not a single Democrat votes in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment that doesn’t even limit abortion. Again, it merely ensures the legislature retains its lawmaking powers to pass laws within the confines of Casey.
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 had spawned the Hodes case in the first place. And two more Kansas House Democrat holdouts, Tim Hodge and Jeff Pittman, voted in favor of a 2017 law requiring abortion providers to disclose their credentials to patients. Yet not one of these Democrats voted to place the constitutional amendment on the ballot.
This inexorable zero speaks volumes. While the national party previously tolerated pro-life Democrats at the state and local level, the demands of the abortion lobby, or leaders, such as the EMILY’s List-endorsed Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, dictate their own litmus test. To be a good Democrat, vote against the “Value Them Both” amendment, conscience be damned.
Margot Cleveland is a freelance writer.
