By Denny Burk
DennyBurk.com
Last week, I asked and answered the question, “Which candidate holds extreme views on abortion?” In this post, I ask the same question about the two major political parties. Which one holds the most extreme views on the abortion issue?
If you get your news from the mainstream outlets, you might be led to believe that Republicans alone are the extremists. After all, they just wrote into their party’s platform a pro-life position that only makes exceptions for the life of the mother (no exception for rape or incest). I have seen report after report describing the abortion plank of the Republican platform as extreme, yet I have heard next to nothing about the Democratic party’s plank on the same issue.
But have you considered the other side of the story? Perhaps you are surprised to learn that there is one, but there is. Have you considered the fact that the Democratic party platform supports tax-payer funded abortions all the way through the eighth and ninth months of pregnancy? Newt Gingrich effectively pressed that point on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, and nearly everyone around the table looked at him as if he were crazy for supporting life in the eighth and ninth months of pregnancy (see video below).
In response to Gingrich, Thomas Friedman proudly proclaimed himself a “Planned Parenthood Democrat.” Friedman even went so far as to celebrate presidential candidates who defend a woman’s right to kill her unborn child in the ninth month of pregnancy. Astonishingly, Friedman said it was a “defensible position,” even as he declined to defend the position when pressed by Gingrich!
For Friedman to demur at that point made it look as if he lacked the courage of his convictions. That Friedman declined to offer even one morally serious argument in favor of killing fully formed humans in utero fails to pass anyone’s smell test. He offered his opinion. Then when pressed, he claimed to be there as a journalist and wouldn’t defend the party platform.
Where are the intrusive media when you need them? Why are journalists uninterested in reporting on how extreme the Democratic Party Platform is on abortion? Notice the indifference on the faces of the journalists sitting with Gingrich around that table. Not one of them registered a single moral objection to late term elective abortions paid for by tax-payers. In other words, they share the views of the Democrats on this issue. There’s nothing to report and no follow-up questions to be asked because legal abortion in the ninth month is simply the view that any rational person would hold. Why would they report on that?
It’s surprising that more candidates can’t make the case as compellingly as Gingrich does in this video. Yet that’s exactly what the pro-life cause needs right now—someone who can demonstrate who the real extremists are in this debate.
- Illegitimate Responses to Illegitimate Rape Remarks • BPB (Denny Burk)
- Abortion Is Not a “Settled Issue,” Election Decides Its Future • LifeNews.com
- Newt Gingrich blasts Thomas Friedman on abortion, Biden on race, Rove on Todd Akin remarks • Daily Caller
- The REAL Abortion Extremists • Town Hall
- God's Word on Abortion • BPB (Tony Garland)
