Planned Parenthood lashed out last week at Democratic Party leaders potentially supporting pro-life members of their party, claiming they lack principles.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., recently announced he would not withhold funds from pro-life candidates. Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, told Politico that’s unacceptable.
“I think he’s totally wrong, and I’ll use every opportunity to convince him of that,” she said.
Democrats are in the minority in both chambers of Congress and want to find candidates that can be successful in the 2018 midterm elections. Luján doesn’t want to close the door on potentially victorious Democrats just because they disagree with the party platform on abortion. The campaign chairman is stanchly pro-abortion and has a perfect voting record on Planned Parenthood’s scorecard, but he says that should not be a litmus test for every Democrat.
The Democratic Party is increasingly becoming more pro-abortion but it will isolate itself if it demands unity for the entire party. If Democrats want to pick up seats in 2018 they will have to win in districts outside of liberal strongholds, which means supporting candidates with varied opinions.
More than one-fourth of Democrats still identify as pro-life, an inconvenient statistic Richards wants to ignore. Instead, she wants to vilify the remaining dissenters within the Democratic Party.
Courtesy: WORLD News Service
Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Publication date: August 25, 2017
