U.S. Congressman Dan Lipinski of Illinois is one of the last pro-life Democrats in the House.
He has stood strong against his party’s increasingly radical pro-abortion agenda, and even spoke at the March for Life in January.
But in 2020, he will face another tough primary challenge by an abortion activist who has the support of wealthy pro-abortion groups.
Democrat Marie Newman announced her plans to challenge Lipinski on Tuesday, the Washington Examiner reports. She previously ran against him in 2018 but lost.
Newman slammed Lipinski’s voting record Tuesday on Twitter, claiming Illinois voters deserve “a real Democrat.”
“We deserve a representative who will vote like a real Democrat in Congress—not someone who routinely sides with Trump and conservative interest groups over his own constituents,” she wrote.
But polls indicate Newman’s position on abortion actually is more out of touch with voters.
A recent national poll by Marist University found that a majority of Americans oppose late-term abortions. Similarly, a poll released in February found a sharp, double-digit uptick in the number of Americans who identify as pro-life after pro-abortion Democrats began pushing abortions up to birth and infanticide.
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In contrast, Lipinski consistently votes in favor of abortion restrictions that most Americans support.
One of his recent key votes was for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which prohibits abortions after 20 weeks when unborn babies can feel pain. He consistently votes to protect unborn babies from late-term abortions and opposes taxpayer funding of abortions, two issues that are widely popular among Democrat and Republican voters alike.
This spring, he was one of just a handful of Democrats to support the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
Lipinski’s pro-life voting record is the reason he is being targeted. In 2018, Newman had the backing of NARAL, Planned Parenthood, EMILY’s List and other well-funded pro-abortion groups. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat him.
Several of Lipinski’s peers in Congress also endorsed Newman in 2018 – an unusual move – and the Democratic Party refused to endorse him – an especially unusual move with an incumbent politician.
The matter is just another sign of the Democratic Party’s increasingly radical stance on abortion. In 2016, the DNC adopted a platform calling for full support of abortion for any reason up to birth as well as taxpayer funding of abortions. Both are widely unpopular positions among the general public.
Party leaders also have been debating whether to stop supporting pro-life Democrats like Lipinski altogether.
Democrats for Life estimates more than 23 million Democrats in the U.S. are pro-life. Pew Research found that 28 percent of Democrats say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. Marist/KofC polling also found that 23 percent of Democrats consider themselves pro-life and 40 percent say abortion is morally wrong.
Many pro-lifers are leaving the Democratic Party because it has stopped supporting pro-life laws and advocates for life like Lipinski. A Massachusetts mayor recently announced his decision to leave, disgusted by the party’s demand that unborn babies be sacrificed and their deaths celebrated.
