A Brief History of Abortion for Democrats...and a Cautionary Tale for Republicans

books:

	• Democrats for Life: Pro-Life Politics and the Silenced Majority Kristen Day New Leaf Press (AR), 2006 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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Important

It is sad to see this book only receive three reviews thus far. It is an important book, and Democrats for Life is an important organization.

Firstly, the book clearly outlines how pro-Choicers took control of the democratic party. Then, the book outlines a prescription to radically reduce the number of abortions in this country by as much as 95 percent! What an agenda!

Many criticize Democrats or Life simply because many of its policy positions strike them as "liberal." This criticism ought to be outside the scope of the pro-life movement. We are a pro-life movement, NOT an economic fiscally conservative movement. We MUST be a big enough tent to include people who are pro-life fiscal conservatives, and pro-life fiscal liberals.

It seems that many today are confused. Being Catholic DOES NOT mean being Republican. I think it can be argued that there is a segment of Catholics out there (especially at places like First Things and Crisis Mag) that are more Evangelical Protestant in their approach to politics than Catholic (this is especially true regarding US foriegn policy).

I am pro-life and 100% Catholic. I am also (reluctantly) a Republican. I couldn't stay in a party that supports "choice" (read murder) as part of its platform. On the other hand, Democrats for Life offers a GREAT alternative, if their party would just stop persecuting them and take them seriously.

Politically conservative Catholics have no more a hold on orthodox Catholicism than politically liberal Catholics do. Ending abortion and support for the family are what animates real Catholics of all political persuasions. Defending free-market capitalism and unjust wars is what animates Evangelical Protestants (and some of their pro-Evangelical allies in the Church)

This author is a brave pro-life Catholic who is in the trenches fighting for the soul of her party as a "liberal." Praise God for her. Chesteron and Belloc might well cheer her on.

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A Brief History of Abortion for Democrats...and a Cautionary Tale for Republicans

Kristen Day first began having misgivings about her party's stance on abortion after the 1992 Democratic National Convention, in which then Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey was not allowed to express his pro-life views on live TV. Back then Day was a congressional staffer. Now she's the national director of Democrats for Life, a grassroots, pro-life organization in Washington D.C. Unfortunately, not much else has changed as Day shows in her brief, but well-documented, history of abortion and the Democratic Party. Day begins with the women's suffrage movement in 1848 and traces the progression (and regression) of women's rights through the subsequent decades before Roe.

Chronicling the chain of events from the 1940s until today, she demonstrates how the party was hijacked by liberal activists who championed a radical "pro-choice" agenda that alienated Catholics, conservative union workers, rural women, and other groups that had traditionally constituted the party's base of support. Day manages to thread the details of legislation and politicians into an impressively coherent narrative.

But while she provides a suburb diagnosis of the problem, the solutions for returning the party to a pro-life majority are sadly lacking. The best she can offer is the woefully inadequate 95-10 Initiative. Nevertheless, Day and Democrats for Life deserve praise and support in their efforts to restore the Democratic Party's commitment to "fighting for the weak and vulnerable."

Pro-life Democrats should read this book to learn how their party lost its moral footing on the issue of abortion; pro-life Republicans should read it as a cautionary tale of what could happen to the GOP once the pro-abortion crowd is welcomed into the Big Tent.

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Good Overview, But....

Kristen Day provides a very readable overview about how abortion came to be an integral but not always welcome part of the women's rights movement. As she makes clear, abortion was not always linked to women's rights. Early pioneers like Susan B. Anthony were adamantly anti-abortion. Day also provides a good overview about how pro-life Democrats were ostracized and shunted from influence in the corridors of power in the party. For anyone unfamiliar with the (sordid) story, this book will give you the basics.

I'm a member of DFLA, and Kristen Day is an energetic and effective leader of the organization. I would have liked to have given the book 5 stars, but I can't because of the typo and editing issues I had with the book. There are a fair number of typos, and all of them should have been caught. For example, Helen Gahagan Douglas, the congresswoman branded by Richard Nixon in their 1950 Senate election race as the "Pink Lady," for her alleged (and untrue) Communist sympathies, is identified in the book as "D-GA." Douglas was of course a D-CA politician. (She also gave Nixon one of the most famous political nicknames in U.S. history: "Tricky Dick.") The book could also have benefited from better editing. It is sometimes repetitious even in the same paragraph. For example, "the effort failed" appears twice in the same paragraph with respect to the same effort. The typos and sloppy edits were distracting, at least to me, in an otherwise interesting book. Still, it's definitely worth the read.

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Day demonstrates how the Democratic Party has been hijacked by the extremely liberal members of the party and special interest groups such as NARAL. She illustrates that only 25% of people in America support the party?s agenda of ?abortion on demand,? and that this superliberal approach to abortion has driven away voters because of this issue. This book is also important for Republicans to read, giving a powerful new perspective and potential ally in Congress. Many pro-life measures in Congress could not have been passed if it hadn?t been for pro-life Democrats, simply because the Republicans did not have enough votes. The Democratic Party?s suppression of its pro-life members is a serious issue for all pro-life people, Democrat or Republican.

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