The anatomy of a tragedy: how the left became pro abortion

The Roe V. Wade decision split both parties.  Here's a story of how the Democrats became the party not only of 'the right to choose' but as Daniel Moynihan famously said:  of infanticide.  Truly a tragedy for a party that always styled itself as fighting for the weak and powerless.  The story becomes particularly sad during the Obamacare debate when the last pro life remnant sold their principles for what turned out to be a mess of pottage.

“A generation or two ago, the Republicans were the pro-choice party and the Democrats were considered the pro-life party,” syndicated columnist Mark Shields, a pro-life liberal, told this reporter in a 2004 interview. Planned Parenthood, he notes, was a favorite charity of George H.W. Bush.

Many Democrats, especially Catholic ones, have long liked to portray themselves as guardians of the defenseless and voiceless, and so the pro-life stance seemed natural to them.

In the 95th Congress (1977-78), the Democrats had a 292-seat majority that included an estimated 125 pro-life Democrats. In 1976, then-candidate Jimmy Carter opposed public funding for abortions. Emerging leaders like Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson, Sr. were all originally pro-life.

Even the hard-left was open to a pro-life stance. The Progressive’s September 1980 issue featured dueling articles arguing both the pro-choice and pro-life positions. It also ran an editorial acknowledging deep divides over abortion: “The debate over current public policy toward abortion is one that divides the left, just as it divides others.”

“To pretend otherwise—or to maintain that there is no room for differences on this within the left—is to divide us further and to weaken us in what must be our common resolve to build a world in which freedom of choice and the right to life can coexist.”

The following month the Progressive reported receiving an “almost unprecedented” outpouring of reader mail. Many took the pro-life side.