Democrats are off the rails on abortion

OPINION:

Democrat Rep. Katie Porter of California suggested in a recent MSNBC interview inflation and abortion are issues that are tied at the hip — meaning, if Americans really want to fight inflation, then they better support abortion on demand.

Seriously? 

Democrats have gone off the rails on abortion. 

Here’s what transpired on MSNBC this past week, beginning with host Lawrence O’Donnell’s question: “President Biden has said that inflation is the number one priority … to try to get under control right now. As you are out there in California talking to constituents during this reelection year for Congress, how does inflation compare to this newly important — in the sense of the Supreme Court decision [that’s] pending — abortion issue? How do those two issues compare?”

Here’s Porter’s eye-opening response, as reported by The Blaze: “Well, I don’t think they compare. I think they actually reinforce each other. So, the fact that inflation can happen and it can become more expensive to feed your kids and to fuel your car is exactly why people need to be able to be in charge of how many mouths they’re going to have to feed.”

She also said that “the fact that we’re seeing this jump in expenses, that we’re seeing people having to pay more in the grocery store, pay more at the pump, pay more for housing, is a reason people are saying I need to be able to make my own decisions about when and if to start a family.”

She’s talking about abortion.

She’s tying together the man-made — Biden-made, to be truthful — matter of inflation with the godly creation of children, and saying to control price hikes, America ought to keep abortion easy-peasy, free and easy. ‘Cause women can’t say no to sex, dontcha know. The only way to family plan is to abort the unwanted, cantcha see.

Have we just given up on the idea that abstinence is an option for those who don’t want to get pregnant? How about the notion that children are gifts from God — not burdens to abort?

Personal accountability. Individual responsibility. 

The way the Democrats frame it, abortion is the only way for women to control their bodies. That’s not hyperbole.

“The House Pro-Choice Caucus wants Democrats to choose not to call abortion a ‘choice’ and instead refer to it as a ‘decision’ because, the group argues, the prevailing phrasing can be harmful to the abortion rights cause,” The Washington Examiner wrote.

The caucus also recommended changing the language of “unwanted” pregnancies to “unexpected” pregnancies. Why? So as to advance the idea that abortion is just another form of birth control, nothing to see here, no real lives to consider here.

Or, as Porter suggested, abortion is simply sound economic science.

It’s these kinds of extremes that turn off more moderate voters in America.

“Democrats are proving to be the real extremists on abortion,” one Washington Post headline said, just this week.

That was before the Senate took a vote on a radical bill that would have made it a federal violation to deny a woman an abortion. Democrats passed the bill in the House, only to see it fail in the Senate, 51-49.

“Sadly,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, after the vote, “the Senate failed to stand in defense of a woman’s right to make decisions over her own body.”

There’s that leftist lie once again — the one that says a woman who can’t abort on demand has somehow lost the ability to decide when, if and with whom she gets pregnant.

Democrats are so out of step with the American people when it comes to matters of life and death of the most vulnerable. Remember this? “Virginia governor faces backlash over comments supporting late-term abortion bill,” CNN wrote in early 2019, of the then-governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, who said a “discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother” about the fate of a baby born with “severe deformities” — seeming to suggest infanticide was on the menu of options.

Northam, mind you, a pediatrician. 

Yes, a majority of Americans do support abortion — as pollsters from Gallup, YouGov, Pew and other organizations have found. But few support abortion in the second trimester — and hardly anyone but the most radical, in the third. FiveThirtyEight, in fact, found contradictory opinions on abortion, with 60% of U.S. adults “generally” supporting legal abortion in the first or second trimester, but then only 28% supporting abortion in the second trimester — and 69% saying they oppose a Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade, despite the fact Roe v. Wade allows women a right to abort until the last few weeks of the second trimester.

This underscores the conflict Americans feel over abortion.

This underscores the complexity of the issue.

And it therefore speaks loudly to two truths about abortion: that Democrats see opportunity to exploit these complexities and conflicts by charging forth with emotion-filled deceptions aimed at swaying the conflicted — and that abortion, indeed, belongs in the hands of the states to decide.

Roe v. Wade never should have dropped at the feet of the U.S. Supreme Court to decide in the first place, particularly in context of an argument about women’s privacy. Putting it back in states’ hands not only upholds the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment, but also forces legislators to go on the record with their votes on abortion — which makes them accountable to the people, who will have the final say. 

That’s how a democratic republic works. That’s how law and order in civil society proceeds.

That’s why Democrats don’t want Roe v. Wade touched. They want their extremes to stay put; they know transparency will get in the way of their extremes.

There will be a backlash at the polls for their political miscalculations and ungodly, even wicked, abortion-on-demand campaigns. America may have grown more secular over the years, but not so much as to accept the argument that abortion is the way to keep inflation at bay. That’s just too much for even non-believers to believe.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE  or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.