Late last month, the Democratic Party announced that pro-life candidates within the party would still receive financial support for the upcoming 2018 elections. Previous party statements had signaled a doubling down on a pro-abortion platform.
Lila Rose, the president and founder of Live Action, reminded the Democratic Party in a tweet just how unpopular its view on abortion is with the American people:
.@TheDemocrats should take note from the last election: Aligning with Big Abortion is unpopular and extreme. https://t.co/aVJXppmrbO
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) August 15, 2017
But the party’s announcement did not sit well with many abortion advocates, including Cecile Richards, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest and most profitable abortion chain. Richards expressed her distaste in several tweets, and more recently, in an interview with Politico.
Planned Parenthood spent an unprecedented amount of money on the 2016 election, even registering voters, and still lost when it came to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House Representatives, and the White House. The Democratic Party platform that year signaled support for not only abortion and Planned Parenthood, but for taxpayer funded abortions. The Democratic Party bragged about the platform in a press release, further discounting pro-life Democrats who voiced their disappointment.
Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats for Life, told Live Action News that she believes Hillary Clinton’s pro-abortion stance contributed to her election loss. Day has been lobbying the Democratic Party to be more accepting of pro-lifers within the party, and had also met with party chairman, Tom Perez.
Abortion also played a role in recent special elections, specifically with the defeat of John Ossoff, the Democratic candidate for a Georgia House seat. Despite his support from Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, both financially and in advertisements, he was defeated by pro-life Republican candidate, Karen Handel.
Polling released before the 2016 election showed that abortion could be a losing issue for pro-abortion candidates and parties. Not long after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas’s abortion safety regulations (part of the HB 2 legislation), a Knights of Columbus/Marist poll revealed that Americans had strongly supported these regulations, including those with varying demographics and abortion views. These annual polls also demonstrate similar support for pro-life laws regulating and restricting abortion.
Other annual polling on abortion from Gallup shows that the American public does not support the abortion position of the Democratic Party. According to Gallup’s 2017 poll, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent, believe abortion is “morally wrong.” A majority, at 54 percent, are in favor of making abortion “legal only under certain circumstances.”
These polls stand in stark contrast to those cited by Planned Parenthood in its attempts to claim that Americans support continuing its taxpayer funding as well as abortion. As Live Action News has explained, those cited polls have quite often mislead poll respondents. While Planned Parenthood has found plenty of creative ways to claim public support, the abortion giant’s opposition to virtually all abortion regulations and restrictions, puts them, and their abortion support, among the extreme fringes of American politics.
Planned Parenthood wasn’t always so rabidly supportive of abortion. Years ago, even the abortion giant admitted, as did its founder, and NARAL’s, that abortion takes human life. Today, more Americans are realizing this truth, are learning what abortion is, and are rethinking their support for it.
When the public learns the facts, abortion becomes less desirable and less acceptable as a solution to anything. Live Action showed this with man-on-the-street interviews, presenting the facts about what abortion really does. Shockingly, some people who were pro-abortion just moments before changed their minds immediately. The videos these people saw featured former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explaining what goes into various abortion procedures, including what happens to the preborn child:
Even arguments from the cream of the crop of academia seem to fail. Princeton professor Liz Harman was recently featured in a video describing her argument in favor of abortion, which — judging from host James Franco’s confused facial expressions — persuaded no one.
While abortion advocates like Harman (and Planned Parenthood employees) seek to dehumanize preborn children with lies about their humanity and development, science tells a different story. From fertilization, a unique and individual life has come into existence. The fascinatingly early development does not stop there, however. Preborn children are full of exciting developments and experiences, including in the first trimester.
Abortion is also a losing issue because many of us personally know people who are alive today because their mothers chose life. Those very real human beings are a testament to the fact that abortion takes life — it doesn’t give it. The more the public sees this reality, the more the tide will continue to turn against abortion.
