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Statement by
Wanda Franz, Ph.D.
President, National Right to Life Committee
Monday January 24, 2005
At the 32nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade and Doe v.
Bolton decisions, the right-to-life movement finds itself in an increasingly
strong position. The recent election results confirm that the pro-life
message is superior to the anti-life message that is expounded by NARAL,
Planned Parenthood, and the extremist wing of the national Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, it is that extremist wing that controls the nomination of
Democratic candidates to the presidency.
Ms. Carol Tobias, Director of the National Right to Life Political Action
Committee, will discuss the election results in connection with the
right-to-life issue. I will briefly comment on the anti-life positions held
by the Democratic Party and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Amidst the recriminations and the wringing of hands after John Kerry’s
defeat by President George W. Bush and the Democratic Party’s setbacks in
Congress, we often heard that the Democratic Party needs to take note of the
“moral values” held by the electorate or, alternatively, that the party
needs to “communicate its values better.”
Well, when it comes to the right-to-life issue, the Democratic Party’s
values are totally at odds with the majority of the voters. In its national
platform, the party did, in fact, take note of pro-life values and then
completely reject them. And what “values” the party has in this regard, it
has communicated all too well—to the detriment of the Democratic Party.
The 2004 Democratic National Platform states that the party stands “proudly
for a woman’s right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless
of her ability to pay.” The party also stands “firmly against Republican
efforts to undermine that right.”
Behind the carefully chosen code words of these two sentences, the
Democratic platform hides radical positions that are rejected by the
majority of the public.
The phrase “the right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade” means abortion
on demand. And it means, as the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Carhart
decision made clear, a practically unrestricted right to partial-birth
abortion. And of that the Democratic Party is “proud”?
The phrase “regardless of her ability to pay” means that the Democratic
Party supports the use of your tax dollars to pay for abortions—a policy
strongly opposed by the public.
By misidentifying efforts to restore the right to life as so-called
“Republican” efforts, the Democratic Platform gives itself an excuse to
reject the goals and values of the right-to-life movement on narrow,
partisan grounds.
Moreover, when the platform opposes “efforts to undermine” the right to
abortion, it undoubtedly means to oppose all sensible and widely supported
efforts to rein in abortion on demand. Among these are laws banning
partial-birth abortions, requirements to inform parents before an abortion
is performed on a minor, and the prohibition against taking of minors across
state lines for an abortion behind the parent’s backs.
The radicalism and mendacity of the National Democratic Party Platform was
perfectly represented by John Kerry, the party’s candidate for the
presidency.
First of all, there was John Kerry’s morally, scientifically,
philosophically, and politically incoherent position on abortion. Mr. Kerry
assured us that he believed that life begins at conception but insisted on
an unlimited right to abortion. Then there was his extensive pro-abortion
legislative record that earned him a “100%” rating by the pro-abortion lobby
and a mere 2% rating by NRLC. NRLC applauds his defeat.
While the Democratic Party has, for the most part, obstructed all efforts to
re-establish the right to life, the main obstacle has been the U.S. Supreme
Court.
With its Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions, the Supreme Court made
abortion one of the most contentious issues of the last 32 years. Far from
settling a constitutional issue, the Court’s arrogant abuse of “raw judicial
power”—to borrow Justice White’s apt phrase—created an enormous
constitutional problem. Not only did the Court invent a new, so-called right
to abortion; it also defied the constitutionally mandated separation of
powers by arrogating for itself the role of a “super”-legislature.
Rather than retreating from this extreme position, in the 2000 Carhart
decision, a 5-4 majority on the Court took Roe v. Wade to its extreme: Roe
is more than the right to abortion on demand; it is now the right to have a
particularly brutal abortion, a partial-birth abortion.
The pro-abortion majority’s detached discussion of the unspeakable brutality
of the partial-birth abortion procedure in Carhart, makes it clear that the
current Supreme Court is quite immune to any new legal argument or
biological fact proving the humanity of the child. To preserve the unlimited
right to an abortion, the pro-abortion majority on the Court is committed to
willful ignorance.
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