Will Pro-abort Gasp Spell Last Gasp for Party of Death?

The week after Thanksgiving, dozens of Democratic Party loyalists gathered at AFL-CIO headquarters for a closed-door confab on the election. John Kerry dropped by to thank members of the liberal 527 coalition America Votes. When Ellen Malcolm, president of the pro-choice political network EMILY's List, asked about the future direction of the party, Kerry tackled one of the Democrats' core tenets: abortion rights. He told the group they needed new ways to make people understand they didn't like abortion. Democrats also needed to welcome more pro-life candidates into the party, he said. "There was a gasp in the room," says Nancy Keenan, the new president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Thus Debra Rosenberg, Deputy Chief of the Washington Bureau, begins her report "Anxiety Over Abortion" in the December 20, 2004, Newsweek.

It is ironic that Ellen Malcolm asked the question. Just three days after the 2004 election, Salon staff writer Farhad Manjoo asked Malcolm, who heads EMILY's List and the liberal vote drive ACT (Americans Coming Together), "Why had ACT failed?"

"Malcolm didn't want to talk about failure," Manjoo advises us in his December 15, 2004, analysis, "The Revolution That Failed."

Malcolm's answer was unsatisfying; given the totality of the loss it seemed disingenuous to call what happened on Election Day a success. But when I pressed her on it, asking in several different ways what had gone wrong, she was unmoved. "You're not listening to what I'm saying," Malcolm finally snapped. ACT hadn't failed.

Indeed, in the view of Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood, it was Senator Kerry who failed. "He did not help the cause," Feldt whined, echoing the complaints of "many [abortion] advocates who blame Kerry for not talking about abortion enough—especially the Supreme Court."

Now, here he was confessing that that the Democrat Party's rigid and zealous stand in favor of every and all abortions cost votes. No wonder, advocates of baby-killing like Nancy Keenan, who regard the Democratic Party as their political lackey gasped in shock and disbelief.

"It might have sounded shocking," Rosenberg conceeds, "but John Kerry isn't alone in taking a new look at how the party is handling the explosive topic of abortion."

As Democratic strategists and lawmakers quietly discuss how to straddle the nation's Red-Blue divide, abortion has become a prime target. "The issue and the message need to be completely rethought," says one strategist. Along with gay marriage, abortion is at the epicenter of the culture wars, another example used by Republicans to highlight the Democrats' supposed moral relativism.

There's nothing "supposed" about it, of course. While polls constantly show that most Americans "favor some restrictions [on abortion], particularly after the first trimester," Rosenberg observes:

Democratic lawmakers have found themselves boxed in by a pro-choice orthodoxy that fears the slippery slope -- the idea that allowing even the smallest limitation on abortion only paves the way for outlawing it altogether. As a result, most Democrats opposed popular measures like "Laci and Conner's Law" -- which makes it a separate federal crime to kill a fetus -- and a ban on the gruesome procedure called partial-birth abortion.

With pro-life Sen. Harry Reid newly installed as Senate minority leader, Democrats are eager to show off their big tent," Rosenberg concludes. Given the rabid resistance to the slightest concession to reason and, yes, morality by the Feminazis, any widening of the Democrat Party's tent in terms of pro-life Democrats and their views is apt to be a carnival sideshow: big on promise and short on delivery.

In that case, Keenan's pro-abort gasp will have prevailed, but it may well prove to be the last gasp of the Party of Death.