National Review Online’s Alexandra DeSanctis wrote an interesting post today [“2020 Democrats Expose Extreme Abortion Policies in New Survey”], covering in much greater detail something we’d addressed earlier: an abortion survey the New York Times took of the Democrats running for President. Her fine story prompted me to take a second look.
There are no startling revelations in the presidential candidates’ responses, just some nibbling around the edges. This is a hard-core pro-abortion field, so you expect that they would toe the Planned Parenthood line with almost 100% fealty.
The irony is that immediately following the first paragraph of the Times’ synopsis, the reader is provided with a link to another Times’ story which ran the same day. It is one about which we wrote at great length: “On Abortion Rights, 2020 Democrats Move Past ‘Safe, Legal and Rare.”
The stories complement each other, removing any doubt just how radically pro-abortion the party now is, how completely it is in Planned Parenthood’s pocket.
The best (but by no means only) examples are their opposition to any ban on abortions past “viability” (which the Times incorrectly pegs at 24 weeks) and support for compelling the public to pay for abortion. By contrast, the public supports a ban on abortions past 24 weeks and is strongly against taxpayer funded abortions.
How to square the circle? As DeSanctis astutely observes, only Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar seemed open to limitations (“restrictions”) past 24 weeks, but on closer examination it was the usual pro-abortion runaround.
Here is the explanations/justifications of one of the leading candidates for why aborting late term babies is fine by her:
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Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren used the same formula. “Only 1.3 percent of abortions take place at 21 weeks or later, and the reasons are heartbreaking,” she said. “20-week abortion bans are dangerous and cruel. They would force women to carry an unviable fetus to term or force women with severe health complications to stay pregnant with their lives on the line.”
We’ve plowed this ground a hundred times. 1.3% of roughly 926,000 abortions is 12,000. The number is clearly higher for reasons we have explained on multiple occasions. (It’s very important to remember, for example, that many of the states that abort the most babies have no reporting requirements!) Even 12,000 abortions hardly warrant a “rare” or “only” designation.
Overwhelmingly, these abortions have nothing to do with “an unviable fetus” or “women with severe health complications.” These women did not recognize (or refused to recognize) they were pregnant and/or delayed having an abortion for a host of reasons. DeSanctis adds, “There are a few clinics in the U.S. that advertise late-term elective abortions, including Southwestern Women’s Options, a facility in Albuquerque, N.M., that performs elective abortions through 32 weeks of pregnancy.” (My emphasis.)
What about picking the public’s pocket to pay for elective abortions? Yes, indeed, harmonize the 16 Democrats who responded, although there was one slightly off-key note from former Vice President Biden. DeSanctis writes
“Biden will repeal the Hyde Amendment and use executive action to on his first day in office withdraw the Mexico City ‘global gag rule’ and Donald Trump’s Title X restrictions,” Biden’s campaign told the Times in a statement. But despite his willingness to jettison his lifelong stance and drift along with party dogma, Biden didn’t answer two additional questions in the survey: whether he would sign a budget that included Hyde and whether he would require private insurers to cover abortion.
By the way, I almost forgot that the Times asked the candidates “Do you believe that abortion should be ‘safe, legal and rare’? Why or why not?” That was the one-time all-purpose evasive answer, first formulated by Bill Clinton.
Only one candidate, who polls less than one half of 1 %, said “yes.” Another, who has since withdrawn, said yes with qualifiers.
There was nothing in the Times survey that would upset Planned Parenthood. All the Democrats bow at their institutional feet.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
