A great read for any Pro-Life Democrats. As a Pro-Life Democrat I do wonder about my position in the party, I know we are in the minority but there are some of us at least in the state government; 2 on the governor’s council, 22 in the legislature but it seems on the national basis it seems almost impossible to get any real say in the party leadership
http://catholicexchange.com/2011/01/10/145380/
Please share widely!
John Tehan says
…because I am in favor of living women making their own choices about family planning. You are not pro-life – you are anti-abortion, or pro-forced childbirth.
Abortions are sometimes medically necessary – as such, the decision to abort is a personal one, between the woman, her family (if she’s inclined to listen to her family) and her doctor. If you are against abortion, don’t have one! But do not try to legislate away my daughter’s rights by granting special rights to a fetus should she get pregnant.
Mark L. Bail says
pro-life Democrat. It goes without saying that people are entitled to their beliefs, but if I were you, I wouldn’t expect gains for your belief in the Democratic Party.
Personally, I don’t think the government should be able to tell women what to do with their bodies. Aside from what laws we now have on the books, I can’t imagine any sensible legislation regulating abortion.
Ryan says
people are NOT “entitled” to tell a woman (or anyone else) what to do with their own bodies. Such a belief is not something to chalk up to personal differences. There’s no bygones there. Either someone believes in freedom for women to make their own medical decisions about their bodies, in concert with their doctors, or they don’t.
Mark L. Bail says
Am I missing something?
dont-get-cute says
That phrase sounds like it belongs on FreeRepublic or RedState. You’ll find lots of pro-choice freedom-loving company there. In fact, I’d say that its the pro-life Republicans that are going extinct, as they get pushed out by the libertarians, they may decide to return to the Democratic party, that traditionally cares about the weak and defenseless more than freedom for libertines.
Bob Neer says
Freedom of choice is just one example. Another is the freedom to marry. In general, the Republican Party at the moment is the one trying to limit personal freedoms, rhetoric notwithstanding.
HR's Kevin says
What individual liberties do you imagine Democrats are against?
theloquaciousliberal says
Especially in 2011.
The Republican party, I would argue, is today *generally* “against individual liberties” in the areas of abortion, GLBT issues, drugs, and many “privacy” disputes (see e.g. the Patriot Act, criminal procedure laws).
BUT the Democratic party, I would argue, is today *generally* “against individual liberties” in the areas of the Environment (see e.g. the EPA), the 2nd Amendment, and in regulating the “Free Market” (taxes, etc).
hoyapaul says
The linked article is nothing more than the standard right-wing Republican argument that Democrats are moral scoundrels and Republicans are the “pro-life party.” Never mind that on just about every “pro-life” issue other than the legal status of abortion, the Catholic moral position aligns much better with the Democrats (assistance to the poor, anti-war, anti-death penalty, etc.).
Plus the article repeats the long-debunked myth that Bob Casey was denied a speaking spot at the 1992 Democratic Convention because of his views on abortion. That’s completely false. He was denied a spot because he refused to endorse the Clinton-Gore ticket (while other Democratic pro-lifers who had endorsed them were allowed to speak).
Bob Neer says
Of a school of thought that some share, and which the reality-based population needs to be aware of. Thanks for the comment.
pro-life dem says
May I ask what the point of the quote above my post is all about? At it looks like is a jab at me for being Pro-Life. If the party is big enough for Democratic Socialist it should bif enough for us Right to Lifers. The name calling should be left to Republicans, who call any Republican who voted with us “RINOs”….
Bob Neer says
As I said “The whole issue of abortion, however, is just one of many in our politics.” There is plenty of room in the Democratic party, in my view, for people on all sides of the abortion issue.
starbuck says
I can understand your point of view, @Bob_Neer. I spent years hoping that I could influence some sort of change in the GOP; eventually my politics changed and I feel much more comfortable within the Dem Party even with my slightly more conservative takes on regulation and business. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? I feel that the Democratic Party better represents me as a whole, even though I disagree with them on some matters of policy. You’re in the same boat just with a different topic.
pro-life dem says
Catholics being more alings with democrats, but the issue of life for some old school democrats is still importnant. I believe the Democratic Party is for the people without a voice, the unborn being put into that group. But today more and more blue dogs are loosing there seats to Republicans. So we do need to con sider are we loosing our conservative wing of the party and can we afford to? This article isnt great but it does bring up that question; where are Pro-Life Democrats go if they feel there is no room left in the party?
doubleman says
The article is garbage, but I still get the question. The answer is that they will stay Democrats unless they are single issue voters. (Also, I reject the notion that there is no room for anti-choice Democrats [see: Harry Reid]). If you are willing to forsake all your other beliefs for one issue then there isn’t much point in being part of either party.
If your main concern is to reduce the number of abortions, I would recommend supporting the politicians who want to do that, almost all of whom are Democrats. Providing comprehensive sex education, free birth control, and providing health care to all people will do far more to reduce the number of abortions than criminalizing the procedure ever.
And, as an aside, if you support the Catholic Church’s teaching on birth control, you should probably just go and register Republican because there isn’t much hope for you.
sue-kennedy says
encouraged the prolife Catholics to quit the team.
So it seems kind of disingenuous to complain there are few prolife Catholics on the team.
pro-life dem says
but answer this, can we afford to loose our conservative wing to Republicans? We can be the party of pro-choice or we can be the party of both sides of the issue because we are a big tent. We are a big tent but most Pro-Life Dems dont see any room in the tent for them. I know we arent going to gain control of the party but the party should do what it can to keep use from going the way of the dodo…
sue-kennedy says
” Sen. Barry Goldwater 1994
But the Democrats have been falling all over themselves to cater to the uber rich, corporations, and banks while cutting social programs. I think that makes them Goldwater Dems.
This is not your grandfathers Democratic Party. Its closer to where the Republicans were 30 years ago.
Ryan says
You presume that “conservative” Democrats base their decision to vote on abortion alone. There’s not a helluva lot of those people left in the Democratic Party, and most of them aren’t voting for Democrats by this point anyway (if they’re voting at all) — mainly living in red states, to boot. The only reason why many of these people may still even be nominally democratic at all is because they forgot to change their party registration. Seriously.
Now, if they’re more of a hawk-ish/austerity types, there are plenty of those democrats still left in the party and I doubt they’re going to go anywhere, because they’re not going to be single-issue voters on the sole basis of a couple cells in a mother’s womb.
The bottom line is if someone is a single-issue voter on abortion alone, they’re almost certainly a very, very low information voter who suffers from a severe case of cognitive dissonance. The chain-linked-to-the-fence, stand-outside-with-bloody-fetus-crowds are NEVER going to vote democratic party, in a million years.
I’ll focus my time on people who may actually vote for Democrats and aren’t crazy tea-bagging dead-enders, thank you very much.
My message to any honest-to-goodness “Pro-life” Democrats would be to support policies (and politicians who support them) that will result in fewer abortions, not more. It’s no secret that as wealth rises in the nation, when everyone benefits it and people can find jobs, abortion will go down. And it’s no secret that with more family planning readily available, there will also be fewer abortions. These reasons are why when Democrats are elected, abortions tend to go down. These reasons are why when Republicans are elected, they tend to go up.
Barack Obama may have done more than any President in the history of this country to reduce the numbers of abortions by demanding that all women who want or are on the pill get it without having to pay any kind of a copay. This will make the pill far more accessible, so there are fewer accidental pregnancies — and thus fewer abortions.
Anyone who cares first and foremost about reducing abortions should be jumping up for joy, going online to barackobama.com to sign up to volunteer in his next campaign. Instead, most “pro life” activists seem to be horrified that more women will be on the pill. That’s because abortion isn’t really about the procedure, it’s about the sex — and if women are having the sex, these people think, they should suffer the consequences. No doubt anti-abortion activists will be going into the next election, believing everything their election masters say, thinking Obama is a mass murderer who won’t be happy until every family’s first born is sacrificed to the abortion god, so to speak.
Believe it or not, there aren’t very many people who want an abortion; it’s a decision of last resort. Republican policies exacerbate all the problems that lead to people taking that final option, from denying our population comprehensive sex education (and instead creating sex-ed classes that mislead youth to making mistakes, like telling them condoms won’t work), to crushing the ability of young people to make a decent living and have decent benefits, so if there’s an accidental pregnancy, they actually feel as though they can afford it. Obama’s done a lot to solve these problems – and I say that as someone who’s no huge fan of Obama.
This isn’t rocket science – but it’s precisely indicative of why people so wholly focused on the question of legality surrounding abortion will never vote Democratic, and why people who may be deeply uncomfortable with abortion and would like to see less of it (because, after all, who wants to force young women into making the decision of the last resort?) can still feel comfortable voting for strong Democrats.
So it’s very possible to be a Democrat who wants to see abortions become less and less common, but I don’t think it’s at all possible to be a Democrat who’s fixated on the question of legality, which by all accounts will hurt women, even as it won’t solve the ‘problem’ in reducing actual abortions — forcing women to travel further and face greater expense with less support, or go underground and risk far greater danger.
Someone who really cared about the choices we force women to make, and wanted them to feel comfortable delivering a baby to term, *should* be voting for the Democratic Party — but the anti-abortion crowd was always far too irrational to think in any of these terms. It’s only a question of should it be or shouldn’t it be illegal. There is no context to them, it’s all black and white. Even when it isn’t.
————————–
Moving onto another point:
I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but anyone can join the party and vote for Democrats. What are we supposed to do? Coddle you? This is quickly descending into the territory of needing to call the waaahmbulance services.
We cannot force people to be democrats, so I’m sorry, but it’s difficult for us to create a “endangered political species list” when we’re trying to win elections and your candidates can’t win and your supporters will never vote for us. Naturally, those single-issue voters will gravitate toward the candidates who can win and the supporter-base that naturally and organically has muscle within that party — and are their own peeps.
Or is this all really just a desperate plea asking for all of us to just stop supporting policies that actually help women and their constitutionally-protected freedoms to make medical decisions about their own body? Because, as you seem to be suggesting, if we don’t stop, we risk “losing” you? That’s what it sounds like to me.
If you want pro-life democrats to rule the roost within the party, you’re going to have to be the one who creates that change. That’s how the Democratic Party, at least in Massachusetts, works: it’s member driven. Asking people who disagree with you to do the heavy lifting for you, or else you’ll up and leave, doesn’t seem very “conservative democrat” to me, and is an utterly bizarre thing to ask.
If that’s what it is, here’s a Fleetwood Mac song that seems to be made for us.
Ryan says
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ul-cZyuYq4&feature=related
jkw says
This is a horrible misrepresentation of what the actual argument is. Both political parties use such framing to get people worked up over an issue, when the actual disagreements have nothing to do with freedom or responsibility.
The difference between the pro-life movement and the pro-choice movement is really an argument over when life begins. The pro-life movement believes that life begins early enough that a fetus has rights and abortion is a form of murder. The pro-choice movement believes that life begins late enough that abortion is an acceptable medical procedure affecting only one person (the fetus is not considered a person). Both of these can be backed up with some amount of science and are reasonable positions for people to take.
In ancient Rome, parents were legally allowed to abandon their children at any time. A father (women had basically no rights anyway) had the legal right to throw his child out into the street to die. This is effectively an argument that life begins when a person is able to take care of themselves. In today’s society, almost nobody takes such a position and people agree that such an action would be considered child abuse and possibly a form of murder. But to someone who believes that life starts at conception, abortion is functionally equivalent to abandoning a helpless child – in both cases you are taking action which will end the life of your child who is dependent on you.
If someone was going on about how awful it is for the government to have oppressive restrictions on killing your infant if you decide you didn’t actually want a child, everyone would think that person is crazy. This is why the pro-choice movement doesn’t convince anyone of anything when they talk about oppressive government restrictions on abortion – the opposition sees that as people demanding the right to kill other people.
The framing of the abortion argument prevents any meaningful discussion. Almost nobody is actually in favor of the government allowing people to kill other people or restricting safe medical practices (abortions kill fetuses, and therefore can’t be viewed as a safe medical procedure if the fetus is treated as a person). Pretending that the abortion argument is really about freedom and responsibility is a convenient way for both political parties to get people worked up about something in a way that will never lead to any resolution. It completely sidesteps the actual disagreement, which prevents a serious discussion of the philosophical arguments.
At conception, the fertilized egg has its own unique human DNA. It isn’t actually a part of the mother anymore. That doesn’t necessarily make it a person with rights, but it isn’t an unreasonable position to claim that it does. When is the appropriate time to declare that a person has a right to survive? At conception, when its heart starts beating, when it has detectable brainwaves, when all of its organs are fully formed, when it starts moving, when it starts responding to external stimulus, when it is born, when it can move in a controlled and deliberate manner, when it can eat solid foods, when it can walk, when it can speak, or some other time? Why is that the right moment, and not some time earlier or later? A serious discussion of this issue might actually allow people to make progress on agreeing when abortion is acceptable and when it isn’t. Talking about government oppression and personal responsibility just wastes peoples time.
centralmassdad says
rather than confront it; the other side will simply respond with something that is similarly designed to pre-empt actual thought.
merrimackguy says
Which is why there will be no resolution. The issue is about 60/40 now and that’s moving against the anti-abortion people.
There are a couple of other issues that this brings up.
If it is a medical procedure, why do we think it’s okay for minors to undergo abortions without parental consent? Should minors be able to have ALL medical procedures (piercings too?) without parental consent?
There are a couple of trends here- as people (particularly in the Northeast) become less religious, this will disappear. In Communist countries they relied on abortion as a form of routine birth control without thinking twice about it.
If sustainability is the issue, then some hard decisions need to be made about preserving life after birth and at other points during one’s “existence.”
This country has thousands of institutions filled with people I would characterize as having no life.
Call me hard hearted but (not necessarily using the Rome example!) we need to make some cultural decisions. We did at one time- babies without much hope were quietly moved to the corners of the nursery, terminally ill people were given a little excess morphine, etc.
Bob Neer says
I don’t think I’m avoiding the issue at all, with respect. I agree there is no certainty as to when life begins. Given that uncertainty, the decision about whether or not to have an abortion should be made by potential mothers, not the government. The former is a manifestation of freedom and personal responsibility. The latter is an example of the state telling people what to do.
dont-get-cute says
The idea that people are above the authority of the state is childish and petulant. The state can’t tell you what to think, but it can certainly tell you what to do.
dont-get-cute says
That’s when the body comes to life, just like a body dies when its heart stops beating. That happens at about two weeks, just about the same time a woman misses her period and starts to feel pregnant.
With that definition, we don’t have to have funerals for all the fertilized eggs that don’t implant (only about half of them implant) and we don’t have to feel we are killing anything when we discard all the hundreds of thousands of embryos currently frozen. There is no life in them yet.
doubleman says
Dick Cheney’s heart doesn’t beat, but he’s still alive, right?
Mark L. Bail says
for miscarriages, heartbeat or not. But hey, everything is inconsistent.
dont-get-cute says
I think the heartbeat is when a body becomes alive and acquires the right to stay alive, but that doesn’t mean we acknowledge the death of every fetus or hold funerals for them.
sue-kennedy says
with brain death – even if the body has DNA, fully formed arms and legs and a beating heart – it called a corpse.
A clump if cells may have DNA, arms and legs and yet still does not possess the qualities that make us human beings – its called a fetus.
If your religon teaches fetus’ are people, creationism over evolution, fine. You have the freedom to practice your belief’s and others theirs.
And yet it moves. – Galileo
centralmassdad says
Then it isn’t called a fetus.
So this is kind of beside the point, which is why the entire debate is like a broken record.
sue-kennedy says
Okay chickens hatch from eggs, unless you eat them, then their called breakfast.
Fetus:
Unless your in church or giving a political speech.
And yet it moves. – Galileo
centralmassdad says
Just so its clear that the difference between a “clump of cells” and a “child” here is whether someone wants it to be born. Which kind of makes the distinction seem a bit semantic, as if the word isn’t so much an argument as a conclusory assertion of a political position.
SomervilleTom says
I think your question leads to a useful distinction. The problem with current discussions about abortion is the automatic assumption that “abortion” means “death”.
Let me therefore propose an alternative: TWO separable and separate decisions:
(Decision 1) The decision of whether or not to separate the embryo/fetus from the mother’s body. I argue that ANY woman has an absolute right to do this at ANY time for ANY reason.
(Decision 2) The decision of whether or not to take measures (including “extraordinary”) to sustain the now-independent embryo/fetus. I argue that this is the same thorny ethical question of when it is appropriate to end “extraordinary” measures to continue life. With modern technology, it is possible to keep a very young fetus alive and thriving, just as its possible to keep a very old man or woman “alive”.
For an embryo/fetus separated before viability, the termination is treated the same as miscarriage.
For an embryo/fetus separated after viability, we have to decide who is responsible, how much is society prepared to spend on sustaining the fetus until it can sustain itself, how the resulting costs are allocated, and a host of related questions.
In my view, the benefit of separating the issue this way is that it allows the currently polarized sides of the “abortion” debate to restart the discussion with a great deal more shared and common ground.
Ryan says
Nitpicking, but I have to disagree with that statement. I wouldn’t say we’re getting close to the point where keeping “very young” fetuses alive is possible, though I guess that depends on what you mean by “very.” 24 weeks is about where we’re at in terms of being able to keep an infant alive more often than not. There are cases where it can be earlier than that, but the survival rates quickly fall off the cliff with each extra week, 21 weeks being about the maximum range.
All that said, what you say is interesting enough and, as technology and health practices improve, may indeed become a viable question in the decades ahead. I would submit, though, that it would be irresponsible to address #2 without a comprehensive plan for the life of any children once the a fetus is out of the womb, from the intensive care such a baby would need for the first few months of their lives, to finding homes for all of them and the resources to thrive — and also ensuring that whatever method of removing the fetus was no more invasive than today’s abortions. I’m not so sure we could answer those questions now or even in a hundred years, so in that case, I don’t think #2 can be anything but an interesting thought exercise for a very, very long time.
SomervilleTom says
Today’s 24 weeks is earlier than when Roe v Wade was decided. Presumably, this threshold will move earlier still if science drives it that way.
I enthusiastically agree with you that it’s “irresponsible” (good word!) to keep the child alive without a “comprehensive plan.” That’s one of the reasons the anti-abortion position is so irresponsible today. When ALL sides focus on what this “comprehensive plan” looks like, we’re much more likely to get to a responsible outcome. Further, this responsible outcome demands a more reasonable response than the current approach, which makes the often-unwilling mother responsible for EVERYTHING.
This approach therefore goes a LONG way towards removing the gender bias in today’s abortion debate. The responsibilities, including financial, that come with the child are equally shared by both parents, and surely society has a role.
From this perspective, those who want to “protect life” can best do so by funding the science and health needed to move the threshold of viability earlier and earlier, by funding the available of contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancies, or both.
Ryan says
I wish this were what was going on in the country, as a whole, but sadly all too many young people never grew up with coat hangers and dead, desperate women. If this country ever went back on Roe V. Wade, of two things we could be sure: 1. The results would quickly become horrendous, as women were forced into making very foolish, destructive choices, because of society’s persecutions, and 2. People would wake up fast and quickly revolt away, though sadly it would take years or decades to undo the damage, resulting in untold thousands of women suffering under a repressive government.
merrimackguy says
What about all the women suffering under repressive husbands? They number in the millions. Any proposals for them?
Ryan says
They already have that right — something that like the matter of choice was won decades, but not centuries, ago. Next.
merrimackguy says
I didn’t realize this thread tolerated pro-abusers.
What do propose for repressed children? Have they won the right to run away?
Ryan says
If a woman is in a relationship in which she is being abused, she has every right to leave — and if actions warranting criminal prosecution exist, she has the right to press charges. These already exist. In no way whatsoever have I advocated the toleration of any abuse, and to suggest otherwise sounds unhinged.
Mark L. Bail says
It’s either right or wrong. Taking a life or not. If abortion is morally wrong, if it’s murder, a child, not a choice, then it makes no sense to allow it in the cases of rape and incest. It’s okay to murder a child when something really awful happens to a woman? That’s morally inconsistent.
On the other hand, it’s hard to argue that the government has the authority to overrule a woman in her decisions about her body. Does or should the government have the authority to tell a woman what to do with her body for 9 months? Should the government be able to tell a woman whether or not she must die for a fetus? Or that a child of 11 or 12 impregnated by her father has to carry that fetus to term?
Short of outright prohibition, what anti-abortion legislation would make sense? None, I think. So an anti-abortion Democrat thinks what, wants what?
dont-get-cute says
The Sun comes up, then it goes down again. The job of the government is to make arbitrary inconsistent laws, and then change them. Society is not a math problem.
Mark L. Bail says
itself is more a biography of itself than anything intelligible, but thanks for playing.
Everything is complex; everything isn’t inconsistent. The sun, which you offer as an example of inconsistency, is a model of consistency. It rises and sets daily. Just because it does two things doesn’t mean it’s inconsistent. If it were inconsistent, the sun might come up three days one week and 7 days another.
The job of government is to make laws that strive to be consistent and unarbitrary. A truly arbitrary law would be applied only to people wearing purple shirts during leap years. Murder might be a crime only when the victim was named Margaret.
Don’t let my logical argument confuse you. I never said it was the only argument, indeed, or even my only argument, just one that hadn’t been made.
dont-get-cute says
Right, OK, everything is complex, which makes things seem inconsistent and arbitrary, and that’s OK. The job is not to make consistent unarbitrary laws, that oversimplifies the complexity of the world. The job is to make useful just and good laws. 55 MPH is arbitrary. 18 years old is arbitrary. But we have to come up with something that seems just and good and applies equally to everyone.
Christopher says
…for a simple question the diarist I think got slapped around a little more than necessary by a few on this thread. Not everyone who is prolife is the next Randall Terry who wants to go to extreme measures to shove their morality down the rest of our throats. There are some very thoughtful and compassionate people who I think do want to reduce the number of abortions in a constructive and meaningful way, as there are many who are prochoice who want likewise. I am prochoice because I believe patients, families, and doctors should make medical decisions rather than the government, but maybe one day when he have the technology to terminate a pregnancy at any stage with a live fetus I can forsee the prolife view becoming the progressive view on the grounds that progressives usually do speak for the most vulnerable. As for the Catholic Church I don’t like that they play politics with the issue, but at least unlike some on the right they are consistent about the culture of life, being against abortion, death penalty, and euthanasia.
Ryan says
I tried to reply to you below, but it appeared as it’s own reply. Probably my fault. But anyway, it’s the one that starts with “I would submit” as the subject heading.
Ryan says
anyone who wasn’t comfortable with abortion and supported policies that would result in fewer abortions, but who didn’t vote for politicians on the basis of the fact that they were anti-choice, are pro-choice, whether they realize it or not.
mannygoldstein says
If I’m pro-life, am I allowed to swat a mosquito or must I let it live?
Obviously, what we’re really talking about is pro-abortion rights vs. anti-abortion rights. The pro-rights camp is about three time larger than the anti-rights camp. Generally speaking, I believe that the pro-rights camp is the larger camp among Republicans, Catholics, and most other groups.
I suspect that very few people are inherently in favor of abortion. But most of us recognize that the real outcome from prohibiting abortion is much worse than the real outcome from permitting legal abortions.
kbusch says
I’m trying to figure out what the question is here.
Is it why have demographics and political opinion conspired to make the ranks of anti-abortion Democrats so small?
Is it why are pro-choice Democrats so mean to pro-life Democrats?
Is it an argument that an opposition to abortion aligns better with liberalism than tolerance for abortion?
Or are you asking the pro-choice majority here to reconsider and switch to being pro-life?