Democrat Platform Backs Tax-funded, Partial-birth Abortions

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The Democratic Party officially supports jamming scissors into an innocent partially born baby’s tiny skull before vacuuming its brain out through a tube and disposing of the body — the horrifying practice known as “partial-birth abortion,” long backed by President Obama — a draft version of its platform revealed. Taxpayers, meanwhile, should be expected to pay for the barbaric procedure, Democrats said in their platform, almost universally expected to be adopted at the Democratic National Convention. And the American people’s money must also continue unconstitutionally flowing to abortion and lobbying giant Planned Parenthood no matter what.

The Democratic Party platform’s language supporting taxpayer-funded abortions and the barbaric partial-birth abortion procedure, unsurprisingly, drew swift condemnation from analysts, pro-life activists and others. The party convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, is already being dubbed the “Celebration of Abortion.” But among Democrats, opposition to the controversial and extreme positions is growing as well. Even some abortion proponents believe the platform should be re-worked to specifically exclude support for tax-funding and the killing of newborns, or at least include a caveat calling for the practice to be “rare.”

Of course, most Americans are pro-life with about 80 percent supporting restrictions on abortion, polls have consistently found in recent years. Public surveys show that almost 75 percent of Americans oppose using public funds for abortions, too. Polls also reveal that even rank-and-file Democrat Party members remain overwhelmingly opposed to the killing of newborn children in the eighth or ninth month of pregnancy (babies can survive outside of the womb as early as five months into the pregnancy). In fact, about 60 percent of Democrats support a ban on the practice, according to a 2011 Gallup study.

Those numbers did not stop radical pro-abortion mongers among party leadership from pushing ahead with the deeply controversial positions, however. “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay,” explains the platform, which was recently released online. “We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.”

Because Democrats know abortion is a losing issue politically, the rabid support for ending the lives of unborn children at taxpayer expense has been fraudulently and deceptively framed as an issue of “healthcare” or “women’s rights.” That is despite the fact that an undercover investigation found Planned Parenthood participates in “gendercide,” the killing of unborn children — mostly females — based solely on their gender. Lawmakers in Congress, meanwhile, recently heard testimony about how Planned Parenthood and the United Nations assist in the implementation of the communist Chinese dictatorship’s brutal forced abortion policies using American taxpayer money — condemned in the most recent GOP platform.

“The President and the Democratic Party believe that women have a right to control their reproductive choices,” the platform continued without mentioning the Chinese women whose children are murdered with help from the UN and Planned Parenthood. “Democrats support access to affordable family planning services, and President Obama and Democrats will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers.”

Planned Parenthood, which actively works to elect pro-abortion Democrats and to block any and all restrictions on terminating the lives of unborn children, has been a staunch supporter of Obama for years. Despite the never-ending barrage of controversy and even criminal investigations perpetually swirling around the organization, the DNC will even feature speeches by Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, the pro-abortion group NARAL’s president, Nancy Keenan, and Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, whose claim to fame is insisting that taxpayers must fund her contraception regardless of their religious beliefs or the Constitution’s limits on federal power.

The Democrat platform also touted ObamaCare’s deeply controversial birth-control mandates. “The Affordable Care Act ensures that women have access to contraception in their health insurance plans,” the document stated proudly, even despite the unprecedented backlash unleashed by the scheme even among Christian Democrats. ObamaCare also ensures that women can use tax subsidies to purchase health-insurance plans that cover abortion and that 15-year-old girls may be sterilized without parental consent. Unsurprisingly, however, those points were not touted in the platform.

Ironically, perhaps, the controversial party document then went on to criticize government involvement in supposed “healthcare” decisions about the “choice” to end the lives of unborn children. “Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way,” the platform explained, omitting the elephant in the room: If taxpayers are paying for something, the government is already deeply involved. Apparently the intensely personal opposition to financing such activities is irrelevant.

Of course, supporting tax funding for abortions is hardly unique to Democrats. Supposed pro-life champion Rick Santorum, a failed GOP presidential candidate, for example, voted in favor of tax-subsidies for abortion behemoth Planned Parenthood. Even now, with the Republican Party in charge of the House of Representatives and, by extension, the power to spend federal money, hundreds of millions of American tax dollars continue to flow toward the organization every year. State and local governments provide even more, and when they resist, Obama threatens to cut off Medicaid for their poor.

But members of the GOP establishment, which has done virtually nothing to stop the funding of Planned Parenthood aside from spewing empty rhetoric and broken promises, have drawn attention to the radical Democratic platform. “The Democratic Party plank on abortion is the most extreme plank in the United States,” observed failed Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich during a TV interview. “The President of United States voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive.”

Gingrich pointed out that the plank says tax-funded abortion “at any moment — meaning, partial birth abortion” — was deeply unpopular among Americans. “The vast majority of women do not believe the taxpayers should pay to abort a child in the eighth or ninth month,” he continued, discussing attacks on the GOP. “Now why isn’t it shocking that the Democrats on the social issue of abortion have taken the most extreme position in this country and they couldn’t defend their position for a day if it was made clear and vivid — as vivid as all the effort is made to paint Republicans?”

But it’s not just Republicans who are highlighting and opposing the abortion extremism. Prominent Democrats including former lawmakers such as ex-Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania and former Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, as well as pro-life Democrat activists, are also fighting back. According to Kristen Day, executive director with Democrats for Life of America, if the party is going to increase its numbers and win the majority, it must recognize the contributions of pro-life Democrats as well as the diverse range of positions on the issue of abortion held by party members.

“For the good of the Democratic Party, we will continue to advocate that the platform language should reflect the true diversity of views within the Democratic Party,” Day said in a statement, citing polls showing that even Democrats overwhelmingly oppose partial-birth abortion. “Our message is simple: If you are pro-life and a Democrat, you can make a difference, thus the case for recognition. Inclusion can make a critical difference in this fall’s election.”

Analysts, meanwhile, slammed the party platform and the hypocrisy of the shrill hysteria over Todd Akin’s controversial “legitimate rape” remarks. “The DNC platform supports all abortion and does not contain any language opposing partial-birth abortion, nor does it distinguish that practice from first-trimester abortion,” wrote Cheri Jacobus in a scathing piece about the issue for The Hill. “It is the official position of the Democratic Party to not only be able to shove the scissors into the skulls of newborns and suck out their brains — they don’t even pretend to harbor the expectation that the practice be ‘rare.’”

Of course, Republicans often ignore the GOP platform, as evidenced by House Speaker John Boehner’s recent admission that virtually nobody even reads it. Regardless of whether or not Democrats pay attention to their own platform, however, the party appears to be intent on cementing its position as a coalition of rabid pro-abortion extremists: abortions anytime, for anyone, all unwillingly funded by the American people.

^{Photo of preparations on the stage for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina: AP Images}

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