If You’re Pro-Life, You’re Not Welcome in the Democratic Party

The Hobby Lobby decision exposed part of the schism between the Democratic Party base and the Republican base. The vocal left has gone on and on claiming that supporters of the ruling are anti-science while at the same time blithely refuse to believe that the concept of an abortifacient doesn’t really exist. For Hobby Lobby, an employee can get prescriptions for 16 different kinds of birth control that prevent conception. The difference now is that that employee would have to “buy” an additional plan for the four medical abortifacients that HHS is already making insurance companies offer for $0. In effect, everyone gets a choice. Hobby Lobby (and a few other companies) don’t make those drugs a standard item and employees still get to sign up for that coverage and not pay out of pocket for it.

Henry Hyde (who inadvertently gave rise to Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos) created an amendment that became part of appropriation bills. It does not allow for the federal funding of abortion. It is not a federal law, however, but an agreement that is often bent but not entirety broken. The White House had to agree to the principle of the Hyde Amendment to get the last few pro-life Democratic congressmen vote yes on Obamacare. Kathleen Sebelius almost immediately went back on that promise by only keeping surgical abortions out of the list of mandatory coverage for all Obamacare compliant plans. Terminating a fertilized egg was no different than preventing conception and was therefore “health care.”

I can argue the “where life begins” question all day long, but my point is that the line has moved for both parties. The people in the driver’s seat of the Democratic Party support abortion past the second trimester and possibly up to labor itself. Many argued that the “partial birth abortion” was nothing more than a late-term abortion despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary. If you are against abortions after the point of viability outside the womb, (around 26 weeks) your ideological home is now with the Republican Party.

My concern is not with Republicans, but with the libertarian streak that doesn’t seem to give a crap about the human condition beyond freedom for anarchy’s sake. The role of government is to keep people or groups from hurting others, (and occasionally themselves) not to protect people’s expensive stuff from poor thieves. The GOP tried to beat morality out of the Tea Party (remember the only mildly popular “taxed enough already” slogan?). Now, most Tea Party candidates are pro-life. Even libertarian heroes Ron and Rand Paul are pro-life and they are also medical doctors.

The Republican tent is now open to the point where you can be pro-choice up to a certain point where freedom is overtaken by responsibility. The current Democratic Party is not interested in the existence of such a line. You cannot effectively run as a Democrat while being pro-life anymore. Bart Stupak, the Congressman who tried to keep abortion funding out of Obamacare, ended up retiring before voters could make a choice on his actions.

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