Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund (and daughter of the late Ann Richards, the outspoken feminist governor of Texas from 1991-1995) has found herself at odds with Democratic strategists over whether the party should endorse candidates who do not support its platform plank on reproductive rights. She’s not happy about it.
As reported and commented on here earlier this month, the issue first arose over the Omaha mayor’s race in which Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, his partner in the “unity tour” Sen. Bernie Sanders, and other progressive groups, including Daily Kos, endorsed a candidate who, it soon came to light, had co-sponsored forced-birther legislation. What really riled reproductive rights activists, however, including Richards, was when Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Ben Ray Lujan said July 31 that the party would not withhold campaign funds from anti-abortion candidates in the 2018 elections.
Although no litmus test on abortion has been the DCCC’s stance all along, Lujan’s announcement has stirred a good deal of angry discussion. This is so in great part because much of the overall resistance to the Trump regime is led by progressive women and because right-wingers have for the past seven years been imposing ever more terrible laws designed to make it more expensive, more time-consuming and more shaming to exercise a right affirmed by Roe v. Wade 44 years ago.
On the one side are those who say the party should be flexible if it expects to win seats in conservative districts and states. On the other are activists who object to this particular flexibility because they view reproductive rights as fundamental human rights and economic rights, not some frivolous luxury add-on. Here’s Richards:
“It’s a shocking sort of misunderstanding of actually where the country is … which is overwhelmingly supportive of abortion rights and also, who are the ground troops that kind of fuel the election of candidates [...]
”Fundamentally, perhaps [what Lujan] missing is, people can distinguish between their own personal feelings and what they believe government or politicians should do. And people even in some of the most conservative areas of the country who may themselves personally say, ‘I would never choose to have an abortion,’ or, ‘That’s not something that’s right for me,’ also, absolutely do not believe politicians should be making decisions about pregnancy for women. [...] I think he’s totally wrong and I’ll use every opportunity to convince him of that.”
Democratic National Committee CEO Jess O’Connell told Edward-Isaac Dovere, “There are going to be instances where not every one of our candidates will lead on every plank of our platform, but we’re not the ones trying to roll back reproductive rights.”
O’Connell is right that the Democratic Party as a whole is not trying to undermine reproductive rights. Indeed, under activist pressure, the party platform’s stance on the issue has become ever stronger over the years. And fewer and fewer anti-abortion Democrats even run for office at the national level, although that’s not true in many state legislatures, where some Democrats vote for or even co-sponsor or draft forced-birther bills.
The problem with O’Connell’s assessment is that even if Democrats were to win majorities in the Senate and House in 2018, the margin would likely be very close. A handful of anti-abortion Democrats in each house could be enough together with Republicans to ensure passage of forced-birther legislation. Say, something like “defunding” Planned Parenthood. With Donald Trump or, even worse, Mike Pence squatting in the Oval Office, as one of them could very well be, that legislation would not face a veto. On the contrary.
And even with a Democratic president in office with a Democratic majority in Congress, legislation to end to the annual renewal of the Hyde Amendment that bars tax money from being used to pay for abortions—mostly through Medicaid—that handful of forced-birther Democrats could be what kills the bill.
As Richards says, Trump has been aiming “both barrels” at women since his first day in office. The last thing the Democratic Party should be doing is giving him more ammo.