Former President Bill Clinton famously said he wanted to keep abortion “ safe, legal, and rare.”
But after the passage of the Reproductive Health Act in New York last week, which allows for abortions to be performed right up to the moment of birth, and with Democrats in Virginia pushing for the same, it is clear that the party has moved far beyond the Clinton position.
Democrats have gone all-in on a mantra that can more accurately be summed up as “dangerous, imposed, and frequent,” as Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, put it this week.
The total embrace of abortion on demand was on full display last week as New York state lawmakers cheered the passage of their abortion bill, offering the odious bit of legislation a thunderous, standing ovation. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo even ordered for the One World Trade Center’s spire to be illuminated in pink light in honor of the bill, transforming the peak of “Freedom Tower” into a massive blood-tinted monument to pro-abortion excess.
In the Virginia House of Delegates this week, there was an equally ghastly display of pro-abortion zeal, as Democrat Kathy Tran introduced a bill that similarly allows for late-term abortions. In a video circulated online this week, a clearly discomforted Tran clarified for the state’s deliberative body that her bill allows for abortions to be performed even when the mother is “about to give birth” and even when “she’s dilating.”
One difference between the pro-abortion circuses in the Empire State and the Old Dominion is that Tran at least had the appearance of being ashamed of what she is seeking to normalize through law. But all that tells us is that Democrats are still united in the push for total abortion, even when some of them are clearly uncomfortable with what they’re advocating. Further, the Virginia bill will likely be defeated by the House’s majority Republicans, but only after enjoying a resounding endorsement from the state’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, who went out of his way Wednesday to defend the bill on the largest local media platform available to his office.
This is the modern-day Democratic Party. It’s all abortion, all the way down. That old, relatively moderate position championed by Clinton is not just antiquated by the party’s modern-day standards, it’s totally irreconcilable with the party’s current trajectory.
There is no place for pro-lifers in the modern Democratic Party. That much has been clear for several years. Cuomo himself said in 2014 that pro-lifers are not welcome in New York. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez also said in 2017 that “every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable, and should not change city by city or state by state.”
That same year, the Women’s March, which used to have the backing of the DNC and nearly every notable Democratic-aligned group, made a point of excluding pro-life groups from its ranks.
What the bills in New York and Virginia tell us is that the Democratic Party has moved so far to the left on abortion that there’s no place in it any longer for even Democrats who are moderate on abortion. What these bills spell out is: There is no place for even “safe, legal, and rare” Democrats in the modern Democratic Party.