When Alice walked through the looking glass to Wonderland, she found herself in a frightening place. In the looking glass world, things were not what they seemed, and words meant only what the speaker wanted them to mean. Alice might have been at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
As a life-long Democrat, I’ve gone to a number of state conventions, but this was my first opportunity to attend the national conclave, and I was looking forward to it with great anticipation. I’m also a long-time activist in the pro-life movement. My convictions about the sanctity of life stem from the Catholic faith I have followed since childhood, and I harbor no illusions about the Democratic Party’s abortion stance.
But I was not prepared for the pervasiveness of the pro-abortion philosophy among convention delegates and the nominees they approved to carry the Democratic standard in November. Nor did I expect the undisguised cynicism of party leaders, who are attempting to use pro-life delegates and grassroots Democrats (many of them Catholic) for their own ends without giving anything in return.
Texas state treasurer Ann Richards set the tone in her keynote address by emphasizing “family” issues. She spoke about the need to nurture children and called them the hope of the future. She told delegates how blessed she feels when she holds her infant granddaughter. Her words had the effect she obviously meant them to have because of what she didn’t say.
Mrs. Richards didn’t mention the proposed party platform, which supports abortion on demand and would endorse the right of her grandchild’s mother to have destroyed that cherished baby in the name of freedom of choice.
Even with the platform before them, delegates may not have realized its import. The pro-abortion plank was buried in the platform committee’s proposal and the word abortion did not even appear in it. The statement merely said that “the right of reproductive choice should be guaranteed regardless of ability to pay.”
In the looking glass world, these 15 innocuous sounding words translate into a death warrant for millions of unborn babies. The plank endorses our country’s current law: legal abortion throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy, taxpayer funding of abortion, the right of minor girls to have an abortion without their parents’ knowledge, and the right of wives to have abortions against their husbands’ wishes—even the freedom to destroy unborn babies because they are the “wrong” sex—in short, the most outrageous and far-reaching abortion policy in the world.
Running proudly on this platform is the presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, who would be the most pro-abortion president this country has ever had. Even before the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, Dukakis had introduced legislation in Massachusetts (at the behest of notorious abortion crusader Bill Baird) to trash the state’s protective abortion law and legalize the unrestricted killing of the unborn.
As governor he appointed pro-abortion officials to important posts and continued his advocacy of abortion on demand and government funding of it. In 1986 he was the main speaker at a January 22 Boston rally to celebrate Roe v. Wade. He declared that “abortion is a personal choice which can only be made by the individual woman” and promised that he is “committed to upholding a woman’s constitutional rights.”
But with the spotlight of a national campaign focused brightly upon him, Dukakis has decided to downplay his abortion militancy. He is astute enough to realize that it does not fit with the “pro-family” image the Party is trying to project. His acceptance speech on Thursday night was filled with numerous references to “family and children” including the announcement that his own grandchild will be born next January. But silence on his pro-abortion record continued. He never mentioned his ardent support for abortion, including the right to abort unborn children who are the same age as his grandchild.
When Dukakis chose Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate, the pro-abortion position of the Democratic ticket was further clouded. The vice-presidential candidate is being packaged as a moderate on the abortion issue when, in reality, his pro-abortion record rivals Dukakis’ own.
News media around the nation swallowed the looking glass version of Bentsen’s record put out during the heat of the convention. For instance, the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote that Bentsen has “opposed… federal assistance to poor women for abortion.” This fictionalized version ignores the fact that since 1977, there have been 45 Senate roll-call votes on federal abortion funding and Bentsen only once supported any restrictions on it. He voted pro-abortion 39 times and was absent for five votes!
In a statement issued this July, National Abortion Rights Action League Executive Director Kate Michelman assessed the vice-presidential candidate this way: “On the whole, Senator Bentsen’s voting record on our issue has been very good.”
Why are the candidates trying to camouflage their pro-abortion philosophy and rewrite their pro-abortion history? The Star Tribune captured it well with this headline: “Party hopes to sell voters ‘family package.’ ” The paper said the Party “hopes to grab the ‘family agenda’ from Republicans who won votes in the ’70s and ’80s by talking about abortion” and other issues of concern at the grassroots level.
The Democratic candidates know their abortion stand is unpopular with the folks back home, but they won’t change it. They have to hide their views and hope that those whose votes they seek will believe the looking glass rhetoric. As the Star Tribune noted, Dukakis “wants desperately to stay vague and play it safe. To him and most of the other Democrats in the hall there is only one platform plank: winning.”
It is not wishful thinking to claim that a candidate with a militant pro-abortion position is out of step with the average Democrat. Recent data from the National Opinion Research Center’s 1988 General Social Survey indicate that 55.7 percent of Democrats oppose the legal right to abortion “if a woman wants it for any reason.” Among Democratic women, 57.3 percent oppose unrestricted abortion.
How ironic! The Party claims to be the party of the people and the standard bearer for “women’s issues,” and yet the majority of its own members—and an even larger majority of its female members—don’t support its platform plank calling for unrestricted legal abortion.
Similarly, the Party claims a large minority constituency, yet across the last four years, poll figures show that 61.6 percent of black Democrats and 68.2 percent of Hispanic Democrats don’t support abortion on demand.
These grassroots Democrats understand what drafters of the Democratic National Platform refuse to recognize: that opposing the mass legal destruction of millions of unborn human babies is not a Republican issue or even a conservative issue. On the contrary, it is an issue that fits perfectly with the philosophy of liberalism and the goals and principles of the Democratic Party.
Historically, the Party has taken the lead in extending a greater measure of human rights to broader categories of human beings. Protecting the rights of minorities, the young and old, the disadvantaged and the powerless, has been a special focus for those who are liberals by temperament and Democrats by choice.
But who could be more in the minority, younger, more powerless, or less advantaged than an “unwanted” unborn child?
Since 1973 over 20 million babies have been destroyed under a legal and social policy heartily endorsed by the Democratic Party’s platform and its leaders. The Party could again be worthy of its image as a champion of the poor and powerless by admitting that Roe v. Wade was a mistake. Instead it has chosen a path of cynicism and deception—mushing up platform language to hide its true meaning, distorting voting records, and pretending that abortion is not an important issue for this election.
As I looked around the convention floor in Atlanta, it was obvious that the Party is responding to a variety of constituencies. Educators, lawyers, feminists, gays, lesbians, blacks, Hispanics—all had vocal representation at this convention and have it within the party structure. They are not criticized for standing up for their various “single issues.” The only minority shut out of the Party is defenseless unborn children and those who would plead their cause through the democratic process.
What’s worse, the party hierarchy is cynical enough to try to use pro-life Democrats by convincing them to support the platform and the ticket because they are supposedly “pro-life” on a variety of issues unrelated to abortion.
I predict that my fellow pro-lifers will not be deceived.
I left Atlanta with a deep sense of sadness that my party has betrayed one of my most deeply held beliefs: that the right to life is bestowed on each human being by our God and Creator and does not belong to any political party to withhold or deny.
I see utter failure for the Party as it tries to fool pro-life voters into embracing the Dukakis-Bentsen ticket, and without those voters I see a probable defeat in November.
The Democratic Party must learn that the tragedy of 20 million dead babies cannot be camouflaged with political theater and cynical maneuverings but can be remedied only by a recognition that Roe v. Wade is an infamous calamity which is leading each year to wider and ever more insidious abuses.
It took Alice a long time to find her way back through the looking glass. I hope the Democratic Party will someday find its way back, but that obviously won’t happen in 1988. That’s too bad for millions of pro-life voters, and tragic for millions of unborn babies.