OPINION:
The lineup of speakers at this week’s Democratic National Convention features a who’s who of Big Abortion. The abortion profiteers list includes Cecile Richards, head of the nation’s top abortion provider, Planned Parenthood; Nancy Keenan, head of NARAL Pro-Choice America; and Georgetown University contraception activist Sandra Fluke, who wants American taxpayers to fund abortion and birth control.
Each day, the convention will highlight politicians and Hollywood stars hostile to religious freedom and the pro-life cause. If in attendance, pro-life Democrats are to be seen, but not heard. The message is clear: If you are a pro-life Democrat, you are not welcome at this Democratic-establishment abortion-palooza. The party that spins diversity is signaling to pro-lifers that they have no business showing up in Charlotte, N.C.
President Obama’s brand of hope and change, which won over many, has turned into a campaign of despair, division and pro-abortion activism. His accomplishments certainly aren’t seen in the economy. His record makes him the most pro-abortion, anti-religion president in American history. By casting the convention as largely one about abortion and the anti-religious freedom and anti-First Amendment mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party think they can capture a large enough share of the women’s vote to compensate for their problems with other constituencies. They’ve severely misunderstood their target demographic. Women are not single-issue oriented and women are deadlocked when it comes to the pro-life-versus-pro-abortion question.
The reality is that any gender gap that may exist is not because of abortion. In fact, in a Gallup poll this year, 46 percent of women identified themselves as pro-life while 44 percent identified as pro-choice. The pro-life numbers are even higher among married women.
However, the close numbers are largely recorded in an up and down question: Are you pro-life or pro-choice? When the discussion comes to taxpayer funding of abortion, leaving abortion survivors to die, partial-birth abortion, sex-selective abortion and abortion after the unborn child can feel pain, women even more frequently find these positions objectionable, abhorrent and even grotesque. Women don’t see late-term abortions and a government-subsidized abortion industry as their future.
More and more Catholics, evangelicals, Hispanics, Jews, black Americans and women are realizing that seeing the preborn as human beings is an invitation to be mocked and shunned by Mr. Obama and the Washington Democratic establishment. Key constituencies view the HHS mandate for what it really is: an attack on our fundamental right to religious freedom.
The other reason for the all-star abortion team parade at the Democratic convention is one of debt. Mr. Obama owes Big Abortion. He has received millions of dollars in contributions and political support from Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the National Organization for Women and other abortion industrialists. One of Mr. Obama’s first actions as president was to reverse the Mexico City policy, fulfilling a promise he had made to the abortion industry. The Mexico City policy required any nongovernmental organizations to agree before receiving U.S. funds that they would “neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.”
If international taxpayer funding of abortion was not enough, while serving as an Illinois state senator, Mr. Obama opposed the state Born Alive Infants Protection Act four times. This legislation would have extended the protection of the law to babies who survived abortions and would have required that doctors provide appropriate and proper health care for the baby. On the federal level, this legislation passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama also opposed state legislation that would have banned partial-birth abortion in Illinois, and he later criticized the Supreme Court for upholding the federal late-term abortion law.
The abortion industry has its president, but will this be enough for him to win? That question will be not only for women to answer but for all Americans tuning in this week to see what has happened to hope and change.
Lila Rose is president of Live Action, a nonprofit pro-life organization, and founder of the Advocate, a pro-life campus magazine.
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