Republicans Should Renew Core Pro-Life Abortion Views, Black GOPer Says
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 25, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A leading black Republican says the GOP should renew its core pro-life views against abortion even though some detractors say the party should move to the left following the presidential election defeat. Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State, says the GOP has been successful as a pro-life party.
"After two disastrous election cycles, it is clear the Republican Party must refocus again," Blackwell writes in a TownHall editorial. "A reenergized GOP must make Republican principles appealing both to its base and also to the changing face of America."
Blackwell says the small faction of pro-abortion Republicans, egged on by the mainstream media, "are blaming the party for moving too far to the right, losing moderate and independent voters to the Democrats."
"These people say social issues such as … abortion should be replaced by economic issues," he writes.
Doing so, Blackwell writes, would put the Republican Party outside the mainstream of American voters who, as polls show, generally take a pro-life view and support most limits on abortion.
"America is a center-right country, both economically and socially. The majority of Americans support … restrictions on abortion," Blackwell explains. "On these and many other issues, the Republican Party embraces what the majority of Americans believe, and the Democratic Party opposes those same positions."
Blackwell says Republicans can persuade minorities and women to support its pro-life principles, but need to be more aggressive in courting their vote.
"Republicans must excite, energize and mobilize their base, while reuniting old coalitions and forming new ones. They must provide bold and innovative leadership to recapture that sense of optimism and opportunity," Blackwell concluded.
This summer, the Republican Party renewed its strongly pro-life platform and it cointained some of the strongest language ever condemning abortion and supporting legal protections for unborn children.
The platform draws on the nation’s founding documents as expressing the earliest support for human life but backs a Constitutional amendment to make those protections clear.
"Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed," the final GOP platform draft said.
"We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children," it added.
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