CHICAGO – While Vice President Kamala Harris is mobilizing the Democratic base, there is a group of party members who are not so enthusiastic about her.
The pro-life Democrat is a dying breed in American political life. When the activist group Democrats for Life of America was founded in 1999, it boasted 43 Democrats in the House as allies in the fight against abortion. Today, the only self-described pro-life Democrat in the House is Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas. And while President Joe Biden has shown some reticence on the abortion issue over the course of his career, moving ever further to the left, Democrats for Life’s leadership has little hope that his successor on the 2024 presidential ticket will be as open to the pro-life argument.
“She needs to listen to what the other side is saying on this issue. The abortion lobby has her ear,” said Kristen Day, the group’s executive director. ShippingDay’s organization held a panel on Monday, the first day of the Democratic National Convention. There, speakers complained to about 15 attendees that they did not feel welcome in the Democratic Party because of their views on abortion.
Biden’s gradual move toward stronger abortion rights reflects the party’s evolution on the issue. While he once voted to allow Congress and state legislatures to Roe v. Wade and opposed taxpayer funding for abortion. Today, he supports codifying the overturned Supreme Court decision into federal law and opposes the Hyde Amendment.
The Democratic Party, under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, took a similar approach to abortion, calling it “safe, legal and rare.” Attendees at this year’s convention were able to obtain a free medical abortion and vasectomy from a regional branch of Planned Parenthood. All available appointments were filled.
“There are obviously no pro-lifers among Democrats in this big tent, so we’re calling on the Democratic Party to practice what it preaches – inclusivity – and that means the party must welcome pro-lifers.”
Former Illinois Representative Dan Lipinski
In addition to condemning the possibility of abortion at the convention, Day also criticized Biden’s stance on the issue. She specifically cited his administration’s legislation on the Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act, which forced abortion into an executive order after Senator Bob Casey, one of the law’s sponsors, said the executive branch could not do it. However, she said Harris is “definitely worse” than Biden on the abortion issue.
“I’m very, very concerned about a Harris administration when it comes to protecting women,” Day said, citing Harris’ investigation as California’s attorney general into anti-abortion activist David Daleiden – who secretly recorded Planned Parenthood employees and accused them of selling body parts of aborted babies – and her “attacks” on pro-life pregnancy centers in her home state.
While Day lamented the decline in the number of pro-life Democrats over the years, the podium included one such former congressman: Dan Lipinski, who represented Illinois for eight terms until losing a primary to a challenger backed by pro-lifers in 2020. Lipinski accused Harris of failing to make room for pro-lifers in her party.
“I saw a quote the other day from one of my former colleagues who said that Vice President Harris is really presenting a big tent right now,” he said in his remarks. “But of course, that big tent does not include pro-life Democrats, so we are calling on the Democratic Party to practice what it preaches — inclusivity — and that means the party must welcome pro-lifers.”
Like Day, he expressed concerns about Harris’s commitment to abortion rights, pointing out that she was the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic earlier this year.
But while speakers expressed dismay at expanding abortion access, they did not focus on restricting abortion at the federal level. Instead, they supported proposals to make births “free” and offer government assistance to families.
A memorandum prepared by Day contains several key pillars of a “Democratic Party for All,” including welcoming pro-lifers, a call to “refrain from attacking pregnancy counseling centers,” and programs such as an expanded child tax credit, paid family leave, and financial assistance for working families during pregnancy. It also supports some Republican legislative proposals.
Day said she is focused on those priorities because a federal abortion restriction is unlikely to receive the 60-vote majority needed in the Senate to pass.
“I think we need to look for things that are possible,” said Day Shipping. “Free childbirth is possible. Providing resources to women on college campuses… It’s possible, and I think we’re looking at what we can do, not what we can’t do. What we can’t do right now is pass a law at the federal level to restrict abortion.”
The Democratic Party’s program, which delegates adopted at the party convention on Monday, focuses on the reintroduction roe through legislation, repeal of the Hyde Amendment, and continued support for access to medication abortion. It includes some financial assistance programs for families similar to those in Day’s memo.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party has largely abandoned efforts to protect unborn children at the federal level. Last month, Republicans removed much of the historic abortion language from their platform, choosing instead ambiguous language that focuses the issue on the states. Lipinski acknowledged that many pro-lifers are unhappy with the decision.
“The problem is that the Republicans went from 32 mentions of abortion in their last platform to just one… They’re using gibberish about the 14th Amendment that doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “A lot of pro-lifers are very unhappy with that, but if the Democratic Party doesn’t open the door a crack to pro-lifers, I think they’re just going to vote Republican.”
Although he twice voted for an ill-fated abortion bill that would have effectively banned the procedure at the federal level after 20 weeks of pregnancy—the time at which the fetus can legally feel pain—Lipinski thought it unlikely that his party would support such a restriction at the federal level.
“I don’t think it would be productive for us to talk about it,” he said. “I mean, each of us has our own opinion. I wrote my opinion on it, but I don’t think that really helps us here, because right now we just want the Democratic Party to accept people who are pro-life, and we can see where it goes from there.”
