Supporters of Planned Parenthood rally outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Detroit, February 11, 2017. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters)

I recommend reading Sabrina Tavernise’s report in the New York Times today, in which she considers the situation of Missouri Democratic activist Joan Barry and the wider question of whether it is possible to be a pro-life Democrat.

(Short answer: Not on your life.)

Barry was responsible for inserting a plank into the Missouri Democratic party platform that did not commit the party to any sort of anti-abortion agenda but merely affirmed that those who oppose abortion are welcome in the party. The results were more or less what you would expect from today’s Democratic party: rage, vitriol, death threats, tearful recriminations, ordinary snobbery, etc.

The demand is for absolutism and uniformity. From Tavernise’s report:

“I don’t understand Democrats who quote Truman and F.D.R. and then act like they are terrified to run as an actual Democrat,” said Ms. Merritt, 45, who lives in St. Louis. “You have to believe in something in order for somebody to believe in you. You can’t be such a watered-down thing.”

(You’ll note that the above is not an argument for abortion rights; it is an argument against political compromise.)

There are many subjects on which today’s Democrats would be uncomfortable quoting Franklin Roosevelt or Harry S. Truman. But how about Ted Kennedy on abortion?


“While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy,” he wrote, “it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized — the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.”

Of course, he changed his mind. Ambition is a jealous god. I am skeptical of politicians who have radical changes of heart on fundamental questions of life and death after the age of 40, especially when that change is in a direction that facilitates the advancement of their political careers. (At least Mitt Romney evolved in the right direction; more joy in Heaven and all that.) Senator Kennedy was a young Democratic senator with his eye on the presidency when he wrote those words in 1971, at or near the Democratic party’s high-water mark for postwar liberalism.

The argument against abortion has not changed since Senator Kennedy made it so succinctly. What has changed is the Democratic party, which demands absolute fealty on the issue of abortion and whose members regard pro-life views as a scarlet letter identifying a person as one of those people. This is as much social as political (probably more). From the Times:

She recalled a cocktail party conversation with a woman who asked why she was not seeking help from Naral during her run for State Senate in 2008. “I said, ‘Oh boy, you know I don’t think that would work,’” Ms. Barry replied. When she explained that she opposed abortion, the woman “looked at me like I had the plague. She had this horrible look on her face of just disgust and she walked away from me.”

As a purely literary aside, I appreciated Tavernise’s noting that the original debate over the Missouri Democratic party’s platform took place among activists meeting at a Panera Bread. I love that. As a shorthand for early 21st-century despair, debating abortion at a Panera could hardly be improved upon. Unless it was Arby’s.