Blogs

If Democrats and liberal feminists lose the presidential election this fall despite their “war on women” strategy, they will have depleted their arsenal.

Image

In their most candid interviews to date, various Democrats and abortion industry players freely admitted in a Politico article today what they have only heretofore hinted at (such as here and here): They know abortion has become a losing issue for them.

In order to get women to unwittingly support abortion, they are pulling out all stops, accusing Republicans of wanting to ban contraception,  encourage domestic violence, and deny women breast exams, maternity care, equal pay, and education access.  It’s all in a quite revealing article…

Democrats think they’ve figured out how to win the abortion debate: Don’t make it about abortion.

Starting Tuesday, the Democratic convention here will feature speeches from Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Cecile Richards, NARAL President Nancy Keenan and Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, who became a flashpoint in the debate over requiring Catholic institutions to pay for birth control.

But don’t expect them to focus on abortion – or even necessarily use the word. Instead, they’ll defend President Barack Obama’s record on reproductive health and reproductive rights. And, as they have before, they’ll accuse GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his party of waging a “war on women.”…

To keep and strengthen its standing, the party has recast its rhetoric on abortion rights. Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans favor at least some abortion restrictions. So Democrats have made the contentious issue part of a larger conversation about women’s health – and that, in turn, is part of a larger conversation that depicts Republicans as opposed to equal pay and access to education for women….

Democrats haven’t always been this cohesive on the abortion debate. In 1992, then-Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey was blocked from speaking to the Democratic convention as part of a fight over his anti-abortion views. For the next decade, Democrats lost House and Senate races in which abortion and measures to limit abortion became central, including fetal-pain legislation and late-term abortion bans.

In the years since, the number of anti-abortion Democrats in Washington has dwindled, and the party has coalesced in favor of abortion rights. Not until the past few months, though, did Democrats begin to put so much attention on issues related to contraception, women’s health care and abortion.

“I’ve never actually seen an election and I’ve been through a few where women’s basic access to health care has been so early and so often a topic of conversation,” Richards said.

(This is only because Richards and her tribe have made it so… because they can no longer scaremonger on “choice”… and also because they are greedy desperate for the windfall profits they would get from taxpayer funded contraception via Obamacare.)

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) described the issue in broad terms. “This is not just about the right to determine when or whether to have a family. It is about the ability to receive regular cancer screenings, maternity care and access to domestic violence counseling,” she said in a statement….

The shift in language helps her party: Asking people to support abortion is a lot harder than criticizing those who are against “rights” and “health.”

“In the age of the ultrasound, the framing of ‘choice’ does continue to resonate with a segment of voters, but not everyone. There’s a lot of women for whom abortion is not a black-and-white issue, but quite gray,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, the moderate Democratic think tank. “Reproductive health is pretty straightforward.”…

Former Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak’s amendment to restrict funding for abortion in Obama’s health care bill nearly tore the party apart and scuttled the law. In the 2010 midterms, the anti-abortion movement almost exclusively backed Republicans, further thinning anti-abortion rights Democrats in Congress. Staunch anti-abortion rights Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA), for example, was among lawmakers targeted in a multimillion dollar 2010 midterm ad campaign from the Susan B. Anthony List that charged she’d “betrayed” her district and “voted for the biggest expansion of abortion in decades.” She lost….

To boil down the pro-abortion dynamics: At some point the Democrat Party started losing politically due to the abortion issue. Rahm Emmanuel recognized this and won Dems back the House majority in 2006 by recruiting pro-lifers. Obama and Nancy Pelosi went on to sacrifice those pro-lifers to pass Obamacare, which has left the Party with no pro-life voice once again. In addition, the Democrat Party has become so liberal in so many other synergistic areas it is barely recognizable from the Party of even 20 years ago.

While the feminist, pro-abortion wing of the Democrat Party is exhibiting great muscle at present, a lot is on the line for them. They may not look desperate, but they really must be.

[Photos via Politico]

Reprinted with permission from JillStanek.com