Pro-life Democrats urge their party to seek alternatives as convention spotlights abortion

The pro-life group Democrats for Life of America urged their party to work on policies that offer women and families support in an effort to reduce abortion at an event near the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where support for abortion was very much on display.

“We cannot push people out of the party,” said Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life and a Catholic, arguing Democrats should demonstrate “empathy and care” on the issue to broaden their coalition.

The Democratic group hosted an offsite event in Chicago to discuss their party’s “increasing hostility” toward pro-life voters, while highlighting areas of possible cooperation, such as advocacy for an expanded child tax credit and the Democrats for Life and Americans United for Life’s proposal to eliminate out-of-pocket medical costs surrounding childbirth.

Democrats released their party platform Aug. 18, the day prior to the start of their convention. The 92-page platform cements the party’s position on expanding access to abortion, and comes as its nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has made increasing access to abortion a key part of her presidential campaign.

The document states the party will oppose “extreme and dangerous abortion bans” and that it is “committed to restoring the reproductive rights Trump ripped away.”

“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 strong ties with Planned Parenthood, a local affiliate of the nation’s largest abortion provider said it planned to provide free vasectomies, medication-based abortions and emergency contraceptives to attendees of the convention via its mobile bus Aug. 19 and 20.

The platform also pledged the party will oppose policies including the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits public funding of elective abortions as one such policy.

A 2022 study by the Pew Research Center found that nearly one in five Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances. Among respondents who answered that way, a higher share were women. The study also found that Democrats who oppose legal abortion are much more likely than those who support it to be highly religious and to identify as Christian, including Catholic and Protestant.

But the pro-life Democrats at the Democrats for Life event said the party was pushing out these voters with its current abortion platform.

Former Rep. Dan Lipinski, a Catholic and a Democrat from Chicago who lost his U.S. House seat after a primary challenge from a pro-abortion rival in 2020, said that the party “cannot keep pushing voters away, but that is exactly what the Democratic Party is doing with pro-life voters.”

Day pointed to losses for Democrats in down-ballot state and local offices as an area where the party could reverse its losses by working with voters who oppose abortion, but agree with the party on other policy matters.

Chelsey Youman, national legislative advisor with Human Coalition Action, told OSV News that “Planned Parenthood performing abortions outside the DNC is both horrifying and telling.”

She noted that Illinois had seen one of “the biggest surges in abortion since Dobbs” and that abortion advocates “also want to fund women’s abortions with our taxpayer dollars, $700 million of which already goes to Planned Parenthood.”

“Instead of offering free sonograms, mammograms or gynecological care, they offer death. Instead of helping women resolve their economic and relational struggles, they help kill their children,” she said. “This stunt reminds us that pregnancy centers are the only ones who take women seriously and help transform their lives for the better.”

In contrast to the Planned Parenthood abortion bus, Democrats for Life hosted a diaper drive to support local Chicago families in need.

Pro-life advocates have seen a recent weakening of their position in the Republican Party, although nowhere near to the extent that their counterparts in the Democratic Party have experienced. In July, at the direction of its presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, delegates at the Republican National Convention approved a new party platform that removed a longstanding call for federal abortion restrictions at 20 weeks — legislation affecting potentially just over 1 percent of unborn children aborted every year — and stated that Republicans will “protect and defend a vote of the people, from within the states, on the issue of life.”

That document stated the party believes the 14th Amendment “guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights,” but that the party would seek to “advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”

The Democratic National Convention concludes in Chicago Aug. 22.

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