Times Examiner Facebook Logo

Friday, March 29, 2024 - 02:28 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

There are politicians who base their decisions on polling -- and others who just do what's right. Then, there are the 2020 Democratic candidates, who don't seem to care about what's popular or right. If they did, at least a handful of the 24 challengers to Donald Trump would have probably rethought their abortion agenda. Because it's not just inhumane. As Gallup points out, it's also wildly out of step.

Americans may not agree on everything when it comes to abortion, but they agree on this: there must be limits. While the candidates are busy trying to make infanticide the new abortion and baby-killing the next big government program, voters are watching with absolute astonishment. This isn't what they want. If liberals took the time to listen to Americans, they'd know that most of them, including the self-professed "pro-choicers," actually hate the idea of abortion. You certainly wouldn't find them celebrating it like they'd won the Super Bowl or petitioning their governor to light up the Brooklyn Bridge to revel in it.

But then, the Democrats are so busy shedding any sense of solemnity on the issue that they haven't stopped to notice just how much the landscape has changed. As Gallup knows after years of tracking Americans' feelings on the issue, a six-point swing in the number of self-described "pro-lifers" is significant. Just over the last 12 months, the two labels have flipped in popularity, resulting in the first pro-life majority in a half decade. Now, in the handful of months since Democrats paraded through state houses, clapping for abortions up until the moment of birth, they are more alone in their position than ever. Just 25 percent of Americans agree with the Left that abortion should be legal at any time, for any reason. That's a five-point drop from 2018 -- and a generous number, based on other polling that shows only single- or slim double-digit support.

Over at the Harvard Center for American Political Studies, only eight percent of Americans said abortion should even be allowed in the third trimester. An even tinier sliver -- six percent -- sided with the Left on birth day abortion. But the real story, Marist would argue, is just how many Democrats (60 percent) split with the national party over late-term abortion. A split, the 30 percent of pro-life Democrats would argue, that could spell disaster for 2020.

The party is "really asking for trouble right now," warned Jacob Lupfer of the new Pro-Life Democratic Candidate PAC. "[It] has 20-plus candidates with identical, extreme positions on abortion. Yet if you look at polling, you'll find that 1/4 to 1/3 of Democrats hold fairly mainstream pro-life views. Does the party have a message to them other than, 'Sit down and shut up?'"

Not yet. As recently as last weekend, 20 of the party's presidential hopefuls were desperately vying for Planned Parenthood's approval at a candidate forum in South Carolina. In a country where 60 percent of Americans want all or almost all abortions made illegal, courting the nation's biggest abortion business hardly seems like the smartest strategy. But then, as South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick, pointed out, that's what you get from "a bunch of radicals."

Democrats are so preoccupied with their extremism that they don't even stop to consider the optics of celebrating Elizabeth Warren's birthday with the "largest birthday denier" in America: Planned Parenthood. While they blow out candles that millions of children never will, there is some comfort in knowing that Democrats' pursuit to transform the country like they've transformed the party is failing. Americans are more sympathetic to the unborn than ever. And Democrats, as usual, seem determined to learn that the hard way.

If you haven't participated in FRC's End Birth Day Abortion campaign, join the tens of thousands of pro-lifers who won't stop fighting until every child is welcomed into the world with warmth. Help us send a message to the halls of power that we are a nation who protects life!


Tony Perkins' Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.

No comments

Leave your comment

In reply to Some User