Pro-life activists hold signs outside a Planned Parenthood mobile clinic near the United Center, the site of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, on August 19. (OSV News photo by Vincent Alban/Reuters)(OSV News) – While support for abortion was being demonstrated at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Democrats for Life of America held a pro-life event nearby, calling on their party to advocate for policies that support women and families to reduce abortion rates.
“We can’t push people out of the party,” said Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life and a Catholic, who argued that Democrats should show “empathy and care” on the issue to expand their coalition.
The Democratic group hosted an off-site event in Chicago to discuss their party’s “growing hostility” toward pro-lifers and highlight areas of potential cooperation, such as advocating for an expanded child tax credit and the Democrats for Life and Americans United for Life proposal to eliminate out-of-pocket medical costs for childbirth.
The Democratic Party’s platform consolidates the position on expanding abortion
The Democrats released their party platform on August 18, one day before the start of their convention. The 92-page platform reaffirms the party’s position on expanding access to abortion and comes at a time when their candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, has made expanding access to abortion a central part of her presidential campaign.
The document states that the party will oppose “extreme and dangerous abortion bans” and is “determined to restore the reproductive rights that Trump has taken away from them.”
“With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again,” it said.
In a sign of the Democratic Party’s close ties to Planned Parenthood, a local branch of the country’s largest abortion provider announced that it would use a mobile bus to offer free vasectomies, medication abortions and emergency contraception to attendees of the party’s convention on August 19 and 20.
The program also stated that the party would oppose policies such as the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits, for example, public funding for voluntary abortions.
Study: One in five Democrats thought abortion should be illegal in all or most cases
A 2022 Pew Research Center study found that nearly one in five Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Among respondents who answered this way, women were most likely. The study also found that Democrats who oppose legal abortion are much more likely to be very religious and identify as Christian, including Catholics and Protestants, than those who support it.
But pro-life Democrats said at the “Democrats for Life” event that the party is alienating these voters with its current abortion program.
Former Rep. Dan Lipinski, a Catholic Democrat from Chicago who lost his U.S. House seat in 2020 after a primary to an abortion advocate, said the party “cannot continue to alienate voters, but that’s exactly what the Democratic Party is doing to pro-lifers.”
Day pointed to Democrats’ losses in lower-level districts and local offices, which could pose a problem if the party works with voters who oppose abortion but agree with the party on other policy issues.
Chelsey Youman, national legislative counsel at Human Coalition Action, told OSV News, “The fact that Planned Parenthood is performing abortions outside of the DNC is both appalling and telling.”
She noted that Illinois had one of the largest increases in abortions since Dobbsand that abortion advocates “also want to fund women’s abortions with our tax dollars, $700 million of which already goes to Planned Parenthood.”
“Instead of offering free ultrasounds, mammograms or gynecological treatments, they offer death. Instead of helping women solve their economic and interpersonal problems, they help kill their children,” she said. “This trick reminds us that pregnancy centers are the only ones that take women seriously and help them change their lives for the better.”
In contrast to Planned Parenthood’s abortion bus, Democrats for Life hosted a diaper drive to support needy families in Chicago.
Pro-life activists say their position in the Republican Party is weakening
The position of pro-lifers in the Republican Party has been weakened recently, but not nearly as much as that of their Democratic counterparts. In July, delegates to the Republican National Convention, at the direction of presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, adopted a new platform that repealed a long-standing call for a federal restriction on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy—a law that potentially affects just over 1% of unborn children aborted each year. The platform stated that Republicans would “protect and defend a state referendum on the issue of life.”
The document stated that the party believes that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution “guarantees that no person shall be denied life or liberty without due process of law and that the states are therefore free to enact laws to protect these rights.” However, the party will seek to “advance prenatal care, access to contraception and IVF (fertility treatments).”
The Democratic Party Convention ends on August 22 in Chicago.
Keywords: Abortion, Election News, Life Issues
