A blizzard is set to hit Washington tomorrow, interfering with plans for the annual Right-to-Life March. There is a metaphor for the state of the pro-life movement in the weather forecast, but it is not necessarily the one that the organizers have in mind.
Those of us who care about the unborn, and believe that they have a right-to-life that should be respected in our legal structure, have been led to believe that the storm we face is essentially a function of Democratic Party politics. This is not entirely wrong: The Democratic Party has become increasingly dependent on groups like Emily’s List for the funding of its campaigns, and those groups exact a price from the legislators they help elect: They want to make sure Democrats do not give an inch, ever. No one should be naïve about the power of money in politics, and in this case, there is no counter-balancing pro-life groups with funding on the left. But, at some point, even the Democrats may recognize that if they ever want to be in the majority in the U.S. House again, they have to nominate pro-life candidates in districts like Michigan’s First congressional district, which was long represented by Cong. Bart Stupak, or Pennsylvania’s Third congressional district, where Cong. Kathy Dahlkemper waved the pro-life Democrat flag for one term, before being swamped in the 2010 GOP tsunami, a tsunami that was engineered, in part, by Republican pro-life groups that opposed the Affordable Care Act.
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