Pro-Life Democrats to Counter Democrats’ Pro-Abortion Convention
by Steven Ertelt | LifeNews.com | 8/24/12
www.lifenews.com/2012/08/24/pro-life-democrats-to-counter-democrats-pro-abortion-convention/
After having been thrown to the curb by the Democratic Party and its refusal to acknowledge them in their party platform, pro-life Democrats are planning to hold their own event at the convention in Charlotte.
Former Rep. Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, will be featured at a Democrats for Life of America event on Tuesday, September 4 to, as the group tells LifeNews, “showcase pro-life Democratic leaders in the political, academic, and religious fields who have spent years standing up for pro-life values and continue to fight for life today.”
The event will be held at the Crowne Plaza Charlotte and features Stupak along with former Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania, Tom Berg of St. Thomas Law School and Steve Schneck, policy analyst at Catholic University of America. Stupak and Dahlkemper faced opposition from pro-life groups upset that they covered up abortion funding in Obamacare.
Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America said the effort was made necessary because the 2012 Democratic platform totally shut-out pro-life viewpoints.
“The draft platform released [by the platform committee] is greatly weakened by its failure to recognize the party’s pro-life constituency,” Day said.
“If you remember back to 1992, when (then Pennsylvania) Gov. Bob Casey was prevented from speaking and that following convention in ’96, Tony Hall and a group of other pro-life Democrats led an effort to add some language to the Democratic platform that said we’re the Big Tent and we see there is a difference of opinions on abortion and we think we should include everybody in our Big Tent, and we see diversity as a source of strength,” Day told CNSNews.com Thursday.
“That language was in 2000, as well. And for some reason it was taken out in 2004. And it was not in the 2008 platform. So we thought that that language was really important to extend a hand out to the roughly one-third of Democrats who are pro-life.”
The Democratic Party has already turned back efforts by pro-life Democrats to moderate its pro-abortion position and add any language to its platform showing it welcomes Democrats who oppose abortion. As LifeNews has reported, the Democratic National Committee has officially rejected an effort by pro-life Democrats to get the party to include them in its platform that calls for keeping unlimited abortions legal and paid for at taxpayer expense.
* * *
Can Schneck have it both ways? As a speaker at an event to protest the Democrats’ pro-abort plaform and convention as well as a co-chair of Catholics for Obama? The latter group includes “Catholic” pro-abort pols and tries to cover up Obama’s pro-abort record with the following goobledygook:
According to a National Public Radio report ( news.wbfo.org/post/biden-and-ryan-share-faith-not-worldview ), Schneck himself has tried to cover up Biden’s pro-abort record by describing him as “com(ing) from a more traditional generation of Catholics”:
Any person who can acknowledge a party affiilation with a National Platform of abortion on demand…euthanasia-(Right to Die legislation)–and the destruction of Marriage cannot be taken seriously. That being said, at some point the Republican Party better make a tangible move to actually do something about it or it will cease to exist.