Prolife Democrats Thirty years after
Hagen, Roe John D. Jr.
John D. Hagen Jr. PROLIFE DEMOCRATS An oxymoron? Paul Wellstone was my friend and mentor, but he was not my candidate in Minnesota's 2002 senatorial campaign that brought about his tragic death. I...
...I was a student in the first political science classes that Paul Wellstone ever taught at Carleton College...
...Support for unrestricted abortion rights has been a litmus test for judicial appointments throughout the past two years, when Democrats controlled the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...The Republicans at least know that life is sacred...
...Neither party provides a good prospect for this, but conceivably it could develop from Republican "compassionate conservatism...
...For nearly three decades, I described myself as a prolife Democrat...
...I take no delight in voting Republican, but I'm likely to do so for any office that deals with abortion legislation or judicial nominees...
...The Court calmly assesses the relative merits of dismembering late-term babies in the vaginal canal by tearing off their arms and legs or by sucking their brains out and crushing their skulls...
...Carhart exemplifies the "darkening of conscience" of which Pope John Paul II warned in Evangelium vitae...
...In recent election cycles, polls have shown Catholic voters frequently migrating from their traditional Democratic allegiance to cast Republican votes...
...Still, leading Democrats demanded a "health" exception to any ban-a loophole that would allow abortionists to use their own "medical" judgment to provide and employ the procedure whenever they chose...
...I'm now a poHOLLAND / ROTHCO litical agnostic...
...The party simply won't allow it...
...Minnesota was one of a handful of states where prolife Democrats were long a genuine political force...
...Yet at this point in our nation's history, I'm more afraid of Hollywood and its values (Hollywood being a principal financier of the Democratic Party) than I am of the oil companies and theirs...
...He was booed and shouted down at party meetings, including the 1996 state convention when he spoke to endorse Wellstone and Bill Clinton...
...When it came to so-called reproductive choice, Paul Wellstone and his proteges all abruptly started to talk like Milton Friedman...
...They opposed attempts to outlaw partial-birth abortion-a practice in which a late-term, fully sentient fetus is pulled alive through the birth canal until only its head remains undelivered, then killed with a stab of a surgical scissors...
...It's nearly impossible to run as a prolife Democrat in many states with large Catholic populations-Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York...
...Outrageously enough, it has accepted money from the Playboy Foundation...
...I'm an agnostic and not a Republican...
...When Democrats declare "choice" the highest value, they forfeit their ability to critique coherently free-market arguments and to advocate for the poor...
...State party officials and the activists who dominated endorsing conventions were adamantly pro-choice, but prolifers were sometimes able to beat the party's endorsees in primary contests...
...I voted for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, wincing at their prochoice views, but swayed by their advocacy for working people, the poor, and the environment...
...It has no membership base, no theology, and no ties to the church...
...It can't arise where people are bent upon preserving Carhart v. Stenberg...
...The Democratic Party is intent on maintaining Carhart and the whole panoply of current abortion rights, without stint or moderation...
...In Democratic Party caucuses, I argued the prolife position year after year with little effect...
...Those hopes were dashed when prochoice cohorts drove Coleman out of the party...
...I enjoyed hours of competition with Paul in the Carleton wrestling room (he had been an outstanding college wrestler, and I was the captain of Carleton's team...
...I supported Norm Coleman, an erstwhile Democrat who had been driven out of the party because he's prolife...
...The decision is jarring not just for its outcome, but for its inhuman, desensitized tone...
...This is Orwellian mendacity...
...When this sort of nihilism is handed down as constitutional law, all human values stand in jeopardy...
...Every social-justice initiative ultimately depends on that...
...I freely grant that the Republican Party has great flaws of its own...
...Mondale aggressively championed abortion rights, and Coleman won with heavy and highly visible Catholic support...
...Coleman ultimately was elected in a close race with Wellstone's successor, former Vice President Walter Mondale...
...I have an undiminished desire for a party that embodies Catholic social-justice teaching-one that is both prolife and propoor...
...California Democrats recently passed a bill compelling Catholic hospitals to train doctors in abortion...
...The site includes a link to Catholics for a Free Choice (CFC), an abortion lobby (until recent protests, it was the only "Catholic" listing on the site...
...In tone, in principle, and in cultural ramifications, Carhart and similar cases embody the law of the jungle...
...Support for unrestricted abortion rights is mandatory for Democratic Party endorsement for virtually any office in most states...
...When Clinton campaigned in Saint Paul, party organizers spitefully snubbed the mayor by not inviting him to attend...
...Carhart v. Stenberg struck down a partial-birth abortion ban that had passed the Nebraska state legislature by a vote of forty-five to one (a ban that had been replicated in Congress and in twenty-nine other states...
...In 1993, Coleman, a charismatic prolifer, won the Democratic primary and subsequently was elected as the mayor of Saint Paul...
...Catholic sensitivities are not accommodated to any extent whatever, but are held in open contempt...
...Large Catholic populations in farming areas and on the Iron Range made economically progressive, anti-abortion candidates viable...
...A striking example of contempt for the teachings of the church is enshrined, despite vigorous protests, on the DNC's Web site...
...With nihilism widespread in the courts, and with the brave new world of biotechnology heaving over the horizon, few things seem more urgent than keeping judicial appointments and other key cultural levers out of Democratic hands...
...The prolife Democratic position is growing untenable...
...Meanwhile, Clinton, Wellstone, and most of the Senate Democrats took prochoice ideology to new extremes...
...The discussion is utterly dispassionate and utterly Orwellian...
...I don't like tax cuts skewed to benefit the rich, and I don't like drilling for oil in wildlife preserves...
...No serious Catholic should lightly support a political party that promotes this sort of cynical imposture...
...I applauded Paul Wellstone's championing of those causes in the Senate...
...If Democrats control the Senate, no judge with any openness to trimming back Roe v. Wade in any respect will be allowed near the appellate bench...
...The partial-birth abortion issue and its sequelae have led me to put aside the "prolife Democrat" label...
...It has everything to do with abortion-rights absolutism in the Democratic Party...
...The American Medical Association (AMA) certified that this procedure is never medically necessary...
...Again, the AMA has stated that partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated, let alone a "life-saving procedure...
...It is funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from large secular foundations-Ford, Rockefeller, and the like...
...Those who still maintain it should read the U.S...
...It seemed possible that we could link Coleman's urban base with farmer-labor votes in rural areas to elect a prolife Democrat as governor or senator...
...Then look at the Web site of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) (www.democrats.org...
...Paul's eloquent social-justice advocacy influenced me to join the McGovern presidential campaign and later to serve as a VISTA lawyer after graduation from Harvard Law School...
...Here's the lead feature on the DNC Web site as of November 15, 2002 (a few days after the midterm elections): Republicans are planning to endanger women's lives and attack their right to choose as soon as they take control of the Senate, according to Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, who will be the new Majority Leader....Lott announced that criminalizing certain life-saving medical procedures used in abortions was his top legislative priority....The criminalization of so-called "partial-birth abortions" is just the tip of the iceberg for the Republicans, as right-wing, antichoice activists plan a full agenda of legislation designed to restrict a woman's right to choose (emphasis added...
...Supreme Court's decision in Carhart v. Stenberg (2000), including the dissents...
...Even today, prolife Democrats represent two rural congressional districts...
...I was always baffled at the capacity of Democrats to denounce economic libertarianism and then to embrace libertarian positions on abortion...
...CFC is a sham, and has been denounced repeatedly by the American bishops...
...practices law in Minneapolis...
...Months later, Coleman joined the Republican Party...
...This development gladdened the hearts of those of us who had fruitlessly labored for years in the party's urban precinct caucuses...
...The trend is not driven by a loss of Catholic social-justice concerns...
...Catholics for Coleman" signs were prominently featured in the campaign...
...I'm a representative Catholic voter who exemplifies this trend...
Vol. 130 • January 2003 • No. 1
