The Patriot Post® · Democrats Take Radical Turn on Abortion

Will taxpayers soon be forced to fund abortions? Under another Democrat administration, the answer is probably yes. On the issue of abortion, the new party platform reads, “We will continue to oppose — and seek to overturn — federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment.” The Hyde Amendment bars taxpayer dollars from directly financing abortions, but Democrats now have their sights set on tearing it down. And suffice to say, it’s quite the “progressive” leap. As Russell Moore and Michael Wear write:

> The Hyde Amendment was passed by Congress in 1976 and signed into law by President Carter in 1977. While some in the party’s more liberal factions disagreed with this, the Democratic Party did not officially contest the Hyde Amendment. After a decade dominated by Republicans, Democrats in the 1990s seemed to believe they should de-escalate some of the more controversial aspects of their abortion language. The 1992 platform called for making abortion “less necessary.” The platform in 1996 lauded the drop in the abortion rate, and called for all Americans to embrace “personal responsibility” to “reduce unintended pregnancies.” In 2000, the Democratic Party spoke of the “individual conscience of each American” on the issue of abortion, and welcomed Democrats of diverse views on the topic to “participate at every level of our party.”

It wasn’t until Barack Obama’s tenure that things began to radically change. “In 2010, President Obama refused to call for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment in the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and assured pro-life Democrats that the law would not use federal funds for abortion,” Moore and Wear continue. “But years of conflict have ensued between the Department of Health and Human Services and the consciences of conscientious objectors to abortion — including nuns — from paying for what they believe to be life-ending contraceptive drugs and devices.” Now Democrats are outright advocating the taxpayer funding of abortion.

As The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas observes, “That’s in the face of 62 percent of Americans who say they oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, according to a poll of 1,009 adults by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, released Monday.” And it’s conservatives who are supposedly out of touch?

As Tony Perkins described it, “It looks like Hillary Clinton plans to run on the only economy this president has improved: Planned Parenthood’s.”