The GOP has deepened its commitment to protecting unborn human life over the past 40 years while the Democrats have become ever more radically pro-abortion, declare the editors of the National Catholic Register.
“At the recent Republican National Convention, the position of President Donald Trump’s party on the right to life of the unborn child stood in dramatic counterpoint to the abortion-rights stance on display the previous week at the Democratic National Convention that formally nominated Joe Biden,” the editors state in a September 5 op-ed analyzing the evolution of both parties on the issue of abortion.
While in 1972, the abortion question did not appear in either the Republican or Democrat platform, over the years, the Republican Party grew more visibly and vocally pro-life while the Democrat Party made reproductive rights one of its defining positions, states the Register, the newspaper of record for U.S. Catholics.
As time passed, “pro-lifers would feel more at home on the GOP side of the aisle” whereas “abortion activists already regarded the Democratic Party as their natural political habitat,” the op-ed observes.
The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked a watershed for Republicans, the essay notes, and his 1980 presidential campaign platform declared: “we affirm our support of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children.” The platform also committed the GOP to “work for the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.”
In 2016, Donald Trump ran on an overtly pro-life platform, the editors note, stating: “we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”
White House, Matt PerdieIf anything, President Trump has grown more pro-life over the past four years. During the 2020 Republican National Convention, the president declared: “Tonight we proudly declare that all children, born and unborn, have a God-given right to life.”
More importantly, “in office Trump has honored his pro-life campaign commitments so assiduously that he is widely praised by pro-life leaders as having done more to oppose abortion than any other president in U.S. history,” the editorial states.
In conclusion, the Register editors note that “after a careful review of the platforms of both major parties on abortion: For the past 40 years, it’s the Republican Party that has made the right to life of the unborn child a vital part of its vision and policy for the United States.”
The self-evident divide between the two parties on the issue of abortion has left Catholic Democrats in a pickle, since they often want to present themselves as “good Catholics” while supporting a party that actively promotes the murder of unborn children.
To defend their stance, liberal Catholic pundits perform semantic backflips to justify their own allegiance to the Democrat Party, decrying pro-life Catholics as simplistic “single-party voters” or downplaying the importance of abortion given the plethora of issues to be considered.
While employing these and other arguments, Jesuit Father Thomas Reese eventually cut to the chase in a recent essay explaining how some Catholics can vote for a pro-abortion candidate in good faith, stating that in the end, “most Catholic Democrats agree with Biden that abortion should be legal.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.