The New York Times columnist David Brooks writes in a “memo” to Democratic Party leaders that their support for abortion on demand up until birth is hurting their party.
Pointing out the failure of the Senate to muster 60 votes to protect unborn babies from abortion past the fifth month of pregnancy, Brooks notes, “I kept wondering: How much is our position on late-term abortions hurting us?”
Taking his readers back through time before Roe v. Wade, when the Supreme Court created a right to abortion – though, as Alan Dershowitz has noted, none ever existed in the Constitution – Brooks observes that some right to life groups, including the National Catholic Welfare Conference, once also embraced progressive causes, such as a “right to collective bargaining.”
Roe v. Wade, however, polarized the abortion debate, Brooks writes, as the pro-life movement gained momentum.
“Without pro-life voters, Ronald Reagan never would have been elected,” he explains. “Without single-issue voters who wanted pro-life judges, there would never have been a President Donald Trump.”
Writing as an “Imaginary Democratic Consultant,” Brooks observes to Democratic Party leaders that science and polling are not on their side and that Democrats likely stand to lose more by clinging to the demands of their donor abortion industry that insists on abortion access up until the time of birth.
He reasons that if Roe v. Wade were overturned and the abortion issue returned to the states, many states would ban the procedure, but many would allow it only in the first few months of pregnancy.
“That’s what most Americans support,” he admits, laying out that only 24 percent of millennial voters believe abortion should be legal under any situation.
Brooks further points to Emma Green’s piece at the Atlantic, which illuminates how science is on the side of the pro-life movement.
“Babies are now viable outside the womb at 22 weeks,” he writes. “Parents can see their babies’ faces earlier and earlier.”
“It could be that one of the current behaviors that future generations will regard as most barbaric is our treatment of fetuses,” Brooks asserts.
The columnist further reasons with the leaders of his party that, by taking abortion off the table as a polarizing issue, they will allow greater consideration of the rest of the Democrats’ agenda.
“Roe v. Wade polarized American politics in ways that have been fundamentally bad for Democrats,” Brooks writes. “If you don’t believe me, compare the size of the elected Democratic majorities in 1974 to the size of the Republican majorities in 2018. Without Roe v. Wade the landscape would shift.”
“We need to acknowledge our vulnerability here,” Brooks urges Democratic leaders.