According to a draft released last week by the the Democratic National Committee, the 2016 Democratic platform will for the first time explicitly call for unlimited taxpayer funding of elective abortions for Medicaid recipients.

"We will continue to oppose — and seek to overturn — federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman's access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment," reads the draft of the Democratic platform. The Hyde amendment is a measure attached annually to legislation that prevents federal funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients except in cases when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother.

West Virginia senator Joe Manchin condemned the proposed language in the Democratic platform regarding the Hyde amendment on Wednesday. "That's crazy," Manchin told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. "It's something that I know most of the Democrats in West Virginia and most West Virginians would not agree with. I don't either."

Manchin is one of the few remaining self-described pro-life Democrats in Congress, but the Hyde amendment has traditionally enjoyed the support of many Democrats who believe in a right to abortion. While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama opposed the measure, Joe Biden repeatedly voted for the Hyde amendment. The law is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives, and it enjoys overwhelming support among voters: Democrats didn't try to repeal it when they had huge congressional majorities from 2009 to 2011.

Calling for the repeal of the Hyde amendment could put some pro-choice Democrats in an uncomfortable position. "I haven't been informed of that change, but I'm going to check it out," Virginia senator Tim Kaine, a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton, told TWS on Wednesday. "I have traditionally been a supporter of the Hyde amendment, but I'll check it out."

The Huffington Post reported Tuesday that Kaine is moving sharply to the left on abortion in an effort to position himself as an acceptable Democratic vice president: Kaine quietly added his name on June 28 as a cosponsor of the "Women's Health Protection Act" three years after it was first introduced. The bill would wipe most state regulations on abortion off the books, including one Pennsylvania law used to convict Kermit Gosnell:

It would invalidate state laws passed in more than a dozen states, most recently in Texas, that would ban most abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy--laws that garner strong support in national polling. It would abolish laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period prior to obtaining an abortion--measures that Americans back nationally by a 41-point margin, according to Gallup. It would strike down laws requiring that abortionists inform women of alternatives to abortion, measures that Americans support by a 77-point margin, according to Gallup.

The Women's Health Protection Act could also lead courts to strike down state laws prohibiting taxpayer-funding of abortion, but its author denies his legislation would do that.

Over the years, the Democratic party platform has lurched to the left on the issue of abortion. Although Democrats said their goal was to make abortion "rare" in 2000 and 2004, they deleted that word in the 2008 and 2012 platforms. The 2012 platform included implicit support for tax-funded abortions, but it did not explicitly call for the repeal of the Hyde amendment.

The Democratic platform will likely move left on a number of issues besides abortion, including single-payer health care, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Guantanamo Bay. While the draft Democratic platform calls for unlimited taxpayer funds to abort the unborn children of Medicaid recipients, it also calls for the abolition of the death penalty for convicted rapists and murders.

The draft 2016 Democratic platform states: "We will abolish the death penalty, which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment. It has no place in the United States of America."

Jenna Lifhits contributed to this report.