The Catholic League has slammed Joe Biden for digging in his heels on the abortion issue, rebuffing overtures from pro-life Democrats to make space for them in the party.
“Pro-life Democrats tried to persuade Joe Biden and the leadership of the Democratic Party to soften their language on abortion rights,” noted Catholic League president Bill Donohue in an essay Thursday. “But the 2020 Democratic Party Platform that passed on August 19 shows they lost.”
While America has become more pro-life, Biden has become more pro-abortion, Dr. Donohue observes. Moreover, “Biden has laid anchor with NARAL, the most rabid defender of abortion in the nation.”
Specifically, Donohue notes that Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America (DFLA), had written two letters to the members of the Democrats’ Platform Committee with four recommendations.
These recommendations included removing language opposing the Hyde and Helms Amendments, which forbid taxpayer-funded abortions. They also called for language committing to making abortion “rare” and opening to diversity regarding abortion in the party.
The official party Platform rejected all of Ms. Day’s recommendations, calling for “the repeal of the Hyde Amendment,” as well as the codification of “the right to reproductive freedom.” It also omits references to making abortions “rare” as well as to “conscience rights,” Donohue observes.
While Mr. Biden was once moderate on abortion, Donohue laments, he has now become an extremist. “There is no abortion, at any time of pregnancy, or for any reason, that he finds objectionable.”
Even Bill and Hillary Clinton, in 1992 and 2008, oversaw a Democratic Party Platform that said abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” This is no longer the case.
Biden, who self-identifies as a Catholic, has rejected this language, a fact that “commits him to the most promiscuous exercise of abortion imaginable,” Donohue states.
Joe Biden and his Democratic Party Platform “just shut the door tight on pro-life Democrats,” Donohue concludes.
It remains to be seen whether their deepest allegiance is to the Party or to Life.