Pro-Life Works: Pro-Life Democrats

April 16, 2010

The End of Pro-Life Democrats?  We Should Hope Not.

Eric Brown

Membership Services Associate

Since health care reform legislation passed Congress last month, taken across the finish line by a crucial bloc of self-identified Pro-Life Democrats led by Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI), there has been heated debate in the Pro-Life movement regarding the integrity and political reliability of Pro-Life Democrats. 

In the aftermath, Pro-Life organizations rescinded their support for self-described Pro-Life Democrats who voted for the health care bill.  A number of organizations cancelled awards and honors they had planned to give to these once heroic Democrats leading the Pro-Life cause against the will of their party.  Most recently, one state’s Pro-Life PAC made a national precedent saying it will not endorse Democratic candidates at all.  In fact, many prominent Pro-Life leaders have said that we have seen the end of the Pro-Life Democrat.  Perhaps they are right.  But there are a number of reasons why the Pro-Life movement should not want to see the end of Pro-Life Democrats.

Since the abortion lobby began to dominate the Democratic Party, the number of Pro-Life Democrats in elected office has dwindled.  Despite this, congressional Pro-Life Democrats - like them or not- have played a very important legislative role as far as the Life issues are concerned.

The number of pro-abortion Republicans in Congress is slightly less than Pro-Life Democrats.  In effect, virtually no Pro-Life legislation in the last forty years could have passed without Pro-Life Democrats.  Without the bloc of Pro-Life Democratic votes, very few Pro-Life bills (and many pro-abortion bills) would pass Congress.  This is simply the current political reality.

This does not constitute an argument defending any regrettable actions taken by congressional Pro-Life Democrats recently or in the past, nor is it an argument in favor of blindly trusting any Democrat who claims to be “Pro-Life.”  However, the fact remains that the votes of Pro-Life Democrats remain necessary in the fight for the sanctity of Life.

Currently, there is no federal law forbidding the U.S. government from funding abortions.  The Hyde Amendment—often cited as the “law” prohibiting federal funding of abortion—is not a law.  The Hyde Amendment (or “Hyde language” offered in variously named amendments) is routinely attached to annual appropriations bills to explicitly forbid appropriated funds within the specific legislation in question from funding abortions.  No one with leadership status or influence in the Pro-Life movement, to date, has introduced legislation to make the Hyde amendment into a federal law that forbids federally funded abortions.

The implication of this fact is that to circumvent federal funding of abortions, all appropriations must have a Pro-Life amendment forbidding abortion funding.  If not, judicial precedent set by the courts will require that abortion be subsidized as a legal medical procedure.  The fact that the federal government has not been directly subsidizing the abortion business is only because, to date, there have always been enough Pro-Life votes in Congress, Republican and Democrat, regardless of which party controls Congress or even the White House.  Regardless of the party in power, there has always been a slim Pro-Life majority in at least the House of Representatives to ensure that this remains the case.  The Senate, even with a pro-abortion majority, will not send appropriations bills back to the House for a second vote merely to remove a Pro-Life amendment.

What will we do the day Congress fails to attach “Hyde language” to an appropriations bill because of a lack of Pro-Life votes?  Such a catastrophe may be possible in the not-too-distant future.  In 2009, the appropriations bill for the District of Columbia failed for the first time to adopt the Pro-Life Dornan amendment to prohibit federal dollars from subsidizing abortions in the nation’s capitol, where prior to this pro-abortion victory, 40% of all pregnancies ended in abortion.  All other Pro-Life amendments were successfully adopted, but in this instance, there was a pro-abortion victory and it stands as a sign of hope for abortion advocates seeking to “repeal Hyde” and normalize public funding of abortion.

The idea of the Pro-Life movement turning its back entirely on any Pro-Life Democrats who have proven themselves credible is frightening in the face of the current political reality.  In 2009 the Guttmacher Institute noted that 1 in 4 Medicaid-eligible women would likely choose abortion over carrying a pregnancy to term if public funding were available—25% of this particular demographic alone.  Without Pro-Life Democrats, subsidized abortions in D.C. may only be the beginning.

In the light of these facts, the answer to our current political conundrum cannot be to withhold our support from all Pro-Life Democrats, especially those who voted against the abortion-funding health care bill despite seemingly insurmountable political pressure from their party.  Most certainly, Pro-Life voters in districts of self-described Pro-Life Democrats who voted for the health care bill have every right to vote to remove those officials from office—this is not a suggestion to the contrary.  However, the idea to work only with Republicans and to not support any Pro-Life Democrats, no matter how principled or sincere they are, would be a grave mistake.

If the Pro-Life movement were to work solely with Republicans to the exclusion of all Democrats, it would have to reap the consequences of such a change in the political landscape.  The next two election cycles surely favor the Republican Party and Pro-Life gains in Congress are virtually certain.  Inevitably, the Democrats will come back into the majority and barring an overturn of Roe in the mean time, Pro-Life policies will have to survive the swing of political power from one party to the other.  A pro-abortion majority will surely roll back Pro-Life policies and the vice versa, back and forth.  In the end, the fate of the unborn will wholly and entirely be contingent on the success of a single faction.

The Pro-Life movement has politically diverse members.  Pro-Life organizations such as Feminists for Life, Secular Pro-Life, Not Dead Yet, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, the Pro-Life League of Atheists and Agnostics, Democrats for Life, and Libertarians for Life reveal in themselves that people outside of the Republican Party can be committed to the sanctity of human life.  This should give pause to anyone suggesting that the Pro-Life movement work exclusively with the Republican Party.  One does not have to be a conservative or a Republican to oppose abortion; in fact, one does not need to be a religious person to be Pro-Life.  The Life issues are not religious issues, but rather moral issues, regarding the most elementary human right—the right to Life.  Anyone, regardless of views on other issues, can recognize the basic fact that abortion is child murder.  For this reason, the Pro-Life movement is and ought to be politically diverse.  The unborn do not care what letter, if any, is behind the name of their defenders and neither should we.