The professional Left is in a panic this week after Democratic leadership announced it would continue to provide material support to all Democratic candidates — even those who consider themselves pro-life — and Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards is leading the charge.
Incensed that the DNC would even consider financing these “traitors” to the Democratic platform, Richards has been on a tear on social media and in interviews, insisting that there’s no possible way a Democratic candidate could ever be so callous as to oppose the very act that is responsible for women’s liberation, even if they have religious beliefs that specify that life begins at conception.
This week, Richards was the featured guest on POLITICO‘s off-message podcast, and the women’s rights crusader insisted that Democrats who refuse to take up the mantle and fight for a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy up until nearly the moment of birth, “lack principles.”
Need to Know Network grabbed the audio.
“I have no idea what is in his mind. I haven’t talked to him,” Richards screeched, talking about Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján, who was the one who expressed his support for pro-life Dems. “It’s a shocking sort of misunderstanding of actually, both where the country is at which is overwhelmingly supportive of abortion rights and also who are the ground troops who fuel the election of candidates.”
“So I think the danger of his remarks are not only sorta maybe tactically not well thought-out,” Richards mused. “But they send a terrible message to people across the country about sort of the lack of principles that perhaps some people in the Democratic Party … stand about.”
Of course, Cecile isn’t exactly being honest about the facts. Although there are many Americans who support abortion, a majority of Americans also support abortion restrictions, including a ban on the grisly “partial birth” abortion procedure.
It’s also laughable to suggest that those who stand on principle in opposing abortion are somehow “lacking” when it comes to conviction. After all, if you have the temerity to claim to be pro-life in a party that has regularly made support for the practice a central part of the platform, you’re pretty courageous — particularly since the dawn of identity politics has made support for women’s reproductive rights a cause celebre.
Let’s put it this way: as a pro-life Democrat, I wouldn’t want to run into any Women’s Marchers in a dark alley.
The most bizarre statement may be Richards’s closing argument: that without across-the-board support for abortion on demand and without apology, Democrats will lose women voters.
“You can’t get elected in this country,” Richards tells the host, “without the support of women.”
This is where Richards turns from an ideologue into an abject sexist. Who says women lack the kind of intelligence that allows them to investigate a policy, or, in this case, a practice, and come out the other side opposing Cecile Richards? Well, for starters, Planned Parenthood, which counts on women to vote lock-step and take their word about abortion being a central facet of women’s health care at face value.
Frankly, its more than a little insulting, especially when you consider that American women are more supportive of government restrictions on abortion than Americans as whole.