As word gets around about the radical abortion position being proposed in the new Democratic Party platform, even some party members are getting uncomfortable.
The proposed Democratic Party platform this year is more extreme than it has ever been, calling for a repeal of the Hyde Amendment and full-fledged taxpayer funding of abortion. The Democratic Party platform already supports legalized abortion on demand for any reason up until birth.
The Hyde Amendment prohibits direct taxpayer funding of most abortions and has done so since the late 1970s. Upheld by the Supreme Court, the Hyde Amendment is now a target of abortion advocates who have moved from pro-choice to pro-abortion — forcing Americans not only to accept unlimited abortions before birth but also to pay for them.
But one Democratic U.S. Senator is calling the newly proposed platform “crazy,” while a potential Democratic vice presidential pick seemed hesitant to get behind it.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, who describes himself as pro-life, criticized the radical abortion language in an interview with The Weekly Standard.
“That’s crazy,” Manchin said. “It’s something that I know most Democrats in West Virginia and most West Virginians would not agree with. I don’t either.”
Most Americans do not support taxpayer funding of abortion either. A new Marist poll shows that more than two-thirds of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, including a majority of women and people who identify as pro-choice.
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As The Weekly Standard reports:
… [Vice President] Joe Biden repeatedly voted for the Hyde amendment. The law is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives, and it enjoys overwhelming support among voters: Democrats didn’t try to repeal it when they had huge congressional majorities from 2009 to 2011.
Calling for the repeal of the Hyde amendment could put some pro-choice Democrats in an uncomfortable position. “I haven’t been informed of that change, but I’m going to check it out,” Virginia senator Tim Kaine, a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton, told TWS on Wednesday. “I have traditionally been a supporter of the Hyde amendment, but I’ll check it out.”
Kaine tries to paint himself as a moderate on abortion, but his recent actions and statements indicate that he is aligning himself with the Democratic Party’s radical pro-abortion stances. He is reported to be one of Hillary Clinton’s top picks for vice president, if she receives the Democratic nomination.
Clinton also has promised that she will make every effort to overturn Hyde and force taxpayers to fund abortions, if elected.
In the latest draft of the platform, the Democratic Party also mentions the abortion giant Planned Parenthood specifically, Breitbart reports. In a press release, the party said it wants to “champion” the nation’s largest abortion chain and commit “to push back on all Republican efforts to defund it.”
Planned Parenthood does more than 300,000 abortions a year, more than any other group in the U.S., and it receives about $550 million in federal taxpayer dollars annually.
The Democratic Party platform on abortion is a stark contrast to the Republican Party’s stance on the issue. The Republican Party platform recognizes “that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”
The Republican Party supports a human life amendment to the Constitution, recognizing unborn babies as human beings with equal rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. It also opposes taxpayer funding for abortions and groups that do abortions. Read the full pro-life platform here.
Several strong pro-life leaders are in charge of drafting the 2016 Republican Party platform. The Hill reports U.S. Sen. John Barrasso will chair the Republican platform committee at the national convention in July. Barrasso, who represents Wyoming, has a 100-percent pro-life voting record from the National Right to Life Committee. His appointment signals a strong party commitment to restoring unborn babies’ right to life.
