Ask Democrats tough questions about abortion, and their extremism on the issue becomes obvious.
Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is pro-life. As such, he constantly is asked about the most extreme cases of abortion — rape, incest, severe threats to a mother’s health. So on Wednesday, Paul encouraged reporters to ask Democrats, who favor legalized abortion, about similarly tough cases, such as late-term abortion.
“Why don’t we ask the DNC: Is it okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?” Paul said. “You go back and you ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she’s OK with killing a seven-pound baby that is not born yet.”
Schultz quickly came back with an answer: “I support letting women and their doctors make this decision without government getting involved. Period. End of story.”
This was a prepared statement, not an off-the-cuff remark, so we should take Schultz’s answer seriously. The “Period. End of story,” part clearly implies that there should be zero exceptions to the right to abortion — that is, zero laws, on any level, to protect the unborn if their mothers want them dead.
Because she was answering Rand Paul’s question, “Is it okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?” the only fair interpretation of her answer is: Yes! Always and everywhere, abortion should be legal. Never and nowhere does an unborn baby deserve legal protection from abortion. It doesn’t matter how developed, how healthy, or for what reason the mother wants her child aborted — that baby’s life should count as nothing if her mother doesn’t want her to live.
This is a very extreme view, and the implications are horrific. You’re in the delivery room and you find out your child is a girl? Abort her, and Schultz is fine with that. You’re giving birth to a baby conceived through IVF, and you see the child is of mixed race? “End of story” for that child, as far as Schultz cares.
The Democratic chairwoman’s position is certainly extreme compared to the rest of the world. Only three other countries — including China and North Korea — tolerate abortion at any time for any reason.
And the American public is nowhere near Schultz on this. Only 23 percent of respondents said in a recent Quinnipiac poll that abortion should be “legal in all cases.” In 2013, sixty percent supported a federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks. Women are more likely than men to support 20-week bans, highlighting how much Schultz is an outlier on abortion. If you poll on 40-week abortions, and sex-selective abortions, the distance is even greater between American opinion and the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
But Schultz isn’t an outlier, because she holds the mainstream Democratic Party position.
President Obama, when in the Illinois State Senate, opposed efforts to require hospitals to care for babies who survived abortions. Extending basic rights to such babies, Obama explained at the time, might in the future infringe on “abortion rights.” The legislation he was resisting at the time explicitly stated it only protected babies who had already been born. Even then, the abstract fear of a future infringement on absolute abortion rights carried more weight for Obama than the dignity of a suffering baby.
Zero restrictions on abortion — the clear position of the DNC chairwoman — also implies legalization of any method of abortion, even the most barbaric. That appears to be President Obama’s view. Obama not only opposed bans on partial-birth abortion, he raised money casting himself as a defender of partial-birth abortion.
In February, 2004, the Obama for Senate campaign sent out a fundraising pitch, trying to hook donors on Obama’s effort to legalize partial-birth abortion, which Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called “as close to infanticide as anything I have come upon in our judiciary.”
In their party platform, the Democratic Party “strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade….” But here’s the thing: Roe is generally understood as a wretched decision grounded in empty legal reasoning. “As a matter of constitutional interpretation,” wrote Harry Blackmun clerk Edward Lazarus, “even the most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum — will tell you it is basically indefensible.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the decision “heavy-handed judicial activism.” Laurence Tribe wrote “behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”
Yet this indefensible decision is sacred to the Democratic Party.
In 2012, U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin made odd, offensive, and unfounded comments about “legitimate rape” when pressed on tough abortion cases. The media made nearly every Republican in America answer for Akin’s existence in their party. Will Democrats have to answer for the radical views of their own party chairman, their own party’s president, and their platform?
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
