Congressman Daniel Lipinski in 2018. (Kamil Krzacznski/Reuters)

The Illinois congressman is facing a primary threat from progressive challenger Marie Newman, who is questioning his opposition to abortion.

Major pro-life group the Susan B. Anthony List has just announced that it will launch a five-figure campaign to support Representative Dan Lipinski, a pro-life Democrat facing a serious primary challenge in Illinois’ third congressional district, which spans most of Chicago’s southern suburbs.

In the primary, which will take place March 17, Lipinski will face Marie Newman, a progressive candidate who attempted to unseat him last election cycle as well. In that race, Newman came within 2,000 votes and just two percentage points of pulling off an upset.


Newman is backed by several left-wing activist groups, including abortion-advocacy organizations such as EMILY’s List and NARAL Pro-Choice America, which have targeted Lipinski because he is one of the few remaining Democratic lawmakers at the national level who vote in favor of pro-life legislation.

Because Lipinski is one of the last pro-life Democrats in Congress, leaders at the SBA List say it’s important to support his reelection bid, and the group is aiming to reach about 17,000 voters in the district with digital ads, phone calls, and voter-contact mail.

Most leaders in the pro-life movement consider it a major loss that legal abortion has become almost entirely a partisan issue and so entrenched in the Democratic Party.


“Congressman Lipinski has been a champion of commonsense, compassionate, and popular legislation to stop taxpayer funding of abortion, to end late-term abortion, and to protect babies born alive after failed abortions,” says Mallory Quigley, national spokeswoman for independent-expenditure campaigns at SBA List’s partner super PAC, Women Speak Out.


Quigley is referring here to the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill to require that doctors provide standard medical care to newborn infants who manage to survive attempted abortion procedures. Last week, 41 Democratic senators filibustered the bill, falsely claiming that it would restrict women’s access to abortion, even though nothing in the bill limits abortion procedures.

The last time Lipinski faced Newman, SBA List organized a district-wide door-knocking campaign on his behalf, reaching about 25,000 voters ahead of Election Day. SBA List’s canvassers focused on moderate Democrats who had voted in previous primaries and who the group’s models predicted were more likely to oppose taxpayer-funded abortion.

Those voters are the ones whom the group is aiming to reach again this time around, and Quigley cites a poll finding that 75 percent of voters in Lipinski’s district said they support laws to require care for infants born alive after a failed abortion. National polling commissioned by SBA List, meanwhile, has found that 70 percent of Democrats support such laws.



“The current Democratic leadership may say there is no room for voices like Dan’s in their party, but we need him now more than ever,” Quigley says, pointing to the growing extremism of the Democratic Party at the national level.

Just last month, for instance, Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said that “being pro-choice is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat.” At a town hall, former presidential candidate and former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg said much the same thing, though not as directly.

For Democrats in Congress, abortion on demand, funded by taxpayers, has become a non-negotiable. But at the state level, that isn’t yet the case. In West Virginia earlier this week, Democratic legislators worked with Republicans to pass a version of a born-alive bill, and it was signed into law by the state’s governor, Jim Justice, who was elected as a Democrat (though he has since switched to the Republican Party). In Louisiana, meanwhile, voters just reelected Democratic governor John Bel Edwards, who recently signed into law a heartbeat bill prohibiting abortion after six weeks.


Progressive groups might be gunning for Lipinski, who is increasingly out of place among his fellow Democrats in Congress for voting to protect unborn human beings. The support he’s receiving from SBA List might be the help he needs to hang on.