HAMMER: Democrats’ Abortion Radicalism Is On Full Display. Here Is How Pro-Lifers Should Respond.

The Democratic Party has moved from the Clintonian abortion formulation of “safe, legal, and rare” to the unapologetic Lena Dunham-esque braggadocio of “shout your abortion” quicker than an Usain Bolt 100-meter dash. And while the silver lining of what National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru aptly dubs “the infanticide craze” currently sweeping its way across sundry Democratic-controlled state legislatures and gubernatorial mansions is that abortion backers seem genuinely worried about a possible blow the current U.S. Supreme Court may soon strike at Roe and it grisly progeny, the barbaric fact remains that these blue states are now in something akin to a race to the bottom to see who can most closely approximate the abortion regime of such “progressive” bastions as China or North Korea.

One supposes that these open supporters of infanticide are at least intellectually honest about their convictions. Alas, that does not make those convictions — however honestly and consistently held — any less barbaric. As Vice President Mike Pence nicely put it, “This shameless embrace of a culture of death is startling to every American who cherishes life.”

Yet perhaps there is an additional silver lining for pro-lifers. The spectacle of Democratic governors from New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island falling all over themselves to legalize de facto on-demand abortion up until birth provides pro-lifers with a unique opportunity to proselytize to the overwhelming majority of Americans who are not full-on crazy prenatal baby killers.

Pro-lifers should do their best to seize this moment — to both preach our substantive message and to tactically appeal to those who hold centrist views on the abortion issue. In doing so, here are four key areas we ought to emphasize.

1. The Democratic Party’s Shift On Abortion Has Been Enormous. As aformentioned, the Democratic Party’s shift on the issue of unborn life has been nothing short of remarkable. For decades, the Democratic Party was the comfortable political home for many pro-life Catholics. Even after the 1973 constitutional atrocity of Roe, the Democratic Party continued to serve as a political home for many pro-life Christians (and especially Catholics) who valued the unborn but leaned to the Left on issues such as immigration or the welfare state. As late as the 1990s, Democrat Bob Casey Sr. was a staunchly pro-life governor of a major state. Whereas Gov. Mario Cuomo was instrumental in concoting the “personally pro-life but won’t force that belief unto others” faux-intellectual farce, his son Gov. Andrew Cuomo makes no such pretensions — such is the inter-generational shift in the Party’s militant thinking vis-à-vis the unborn.

The halcyon days of Democratic acceptance of pro-lifers is unfortunately over. As Cardinal Timothy Dolan lamented in The Wall Street Journal last March, foreshadowing the grisly abortion bill that Gov. Andrew Cuomo would sign into law less than a year later:

An esteemed pro-life Democrat in Illinois, Rep. Dan Lipinski, effectively [has been] blacklisted by his own party. Last year, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez insisted that pro-life candidates have no place in the modern Democratic Party. …

More sobering, what is already the most radical abortion license in the country may soon be even more morbidly expanded. For instance, under the proposed Reproductive Health Act, doctors would not be required to care for a baby who survives an abortion. The newborn simply would be allowed to die without any legal implications. And abortions would be legal up to the moment of birth. …

[I]t saddens me, and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish, when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.

2. Science Is On Our Side. This point speaks for itself, but it is too crucial to dismiss as a merely incidental strand of pro-life argumentation. As I recently wrote:

In truth, the pro-life argument is deceptively simple. There are only two core components.

The first component is science. It is a rudimentary embryological/biological factthat, upon sperm fertilization of an egg, a new DNA code is formed. Removing morality or bioethics from the equation, there is no more obvious place in the gestational continuum to demarcate the scientific origin of a new, discrete human life. …

At a sperm’s fertilization of an egg, the biological process commences through which a new member of the human species is formed. That biological process, if left unimpeded by external actors, will result in the eventual live birth of an organism that every lay person would intuitively recognize as a full-fledged new human being.

Science now informs us when unborn children first develop various body parts, when brain activity commences, when they feel pain, and so forth. This really should be compelling — electrical brain activity usually begins as early as the fifth or sixth week of pregnancy. It is extraordinarily difficult to interpret, on a non-scientific and purely visceral, intuitive level, a biological organism emitting electrical brain waves as merely being an amorphous “clump of cells.” Similarly, ultrasound imagery is also hugely beneficial to the pro-life community, and we ought to invoke and use it frequently.

3. Defunding Planned Parenthood Does Not Mean All Women’s Health Clinics Should Be Defunded. As a general observation of what I have experienced in various modes and settings of pro-life advocacy, there is only so far that constantly calling one’s pro-abortion foe a baby killer will go. To the extent pro-lifers want to engage in the dialectic and persuade hearts and minds — as opposed to merely throwing bombs — it is deeply important to sometimes soften our tone and emphasize lighter, more delicate points. Pro-lifers (properly) speak routinely about defunding Planned Parenthood — an organization founded by an unapologetic eugenicist (Margaret Sanger) and which today performs more abortions than any institution in America. And yet besides the death cult with which it is most famously intertwined, it is also undeniable that Planned Parenthood also performs some (non-death-inducing) women’s health services that pro-lifers and conservatives ought to support: STD testing, vaccine services, and cancer screenings all come to mind.

Pro-lifers ought to discuss more frequently the notion that any defunding of Planned Parenthood could easily be replaced by a funding of women’s health clinics that do not perform abortions. Consider this 2015 study by the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which identified across the country a startling ratio of 20 comprehensive women’s healthcare clinics for every one Planned Parenthood clinic in the country: 13,540 to 665, in total. The Daily Signal wrote at the time:

Alliance Defending Freedom and Charlotte Lozier Institute, the education arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, identified the different Planned Parenthood locations and community health care clinics across America.

The two groups argue there are plenty of health centers — that also can receive federal funding — to absorb Planned Parenthood’s patients should the organization be defunded by Congress.

“What these graphics put into pictures is what the data has been telling us for a long time,” Casey Mattox, a senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom who focuses on pro-life issues, told The Daily Signal. “Planned Parenthood is really a small part of the national health care picture in America.”

To be pro-life is not in any way to be anti-woman — but it is incumbent upon pro-lifers to forcefully drive that point home.

4. Substantive Investment In And Rhetorical Emphasis Of Crisis Pregnancy Centers Can Go A Long Way. Along the same lines of the need for pro-lifers to sometimes take a softer tone and exude compassion for women who find themselves in unplanned pregnancies, I have long been of the belief that pro-lifers need to place more intellectual, social, and, indeed, financial capital toward supporting and maintaining distinctly pro-life crisis pregnancy centers. Put simply, it ought to be much easier for centrists and moderates on the abortion issue to come around to our side when they know that pro-lifers have a firm interest in helping the very best they can the invariably depressed, scared, lonely single women who suffer through unwanted pregnancies. Without a firm commitment to pro-life crisis pregnancy centers (i.e., those centers that do not offer abortions), the pro-life argument risks ringing hollow for many. It is easy to preach the natural rights theory and rudimentary embryology that both support the right to life for unborn children. It is far more difficult, though just as important, to preach the need for pro-lifers to fully and unequivocally endorse and support our caring for single women who endure unplanned pregnancies. Churches, synagogues, and the various other mediating institutions of civil society need to do a better job than they already are of funding and supporting pro-life crisis pregnancy centers across the country. Pro-lifers are not just pro-unborn baby, but also pro-woman — but we need our actions to consistently match our beliefs in demonstrating that.