The Gag Rule Party
May 05, 2011
There's an old Pennsylvania Dutch lament: ``We get too soon old, and too late smart.'' Reminds me of the national Democrats. They never seem to learn. They seem determined to give tolerance a bad name--again. The raging national debate about tolerance on the issue of abortion was ignited in New York at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, when the party denied me, then the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, the right to speak because I am pro-life and planned to say so from the convention podium. That's how the Democrats became known as the party of the gag rule. And they seem to think the gag rule on abortion has served them well, because they intend to impose it again in Chicago next week by once again denying me a speaking slot at their convention. The New Intolerance The first thing the Democratic leaders don't want you to hear is that, on this single issue, they have become a lock-step, litmus-test, gag-rule party. They have been intolerant of those who hold the pro-life view, who have carried the Democratic banner into battle and supported the party and its candidates for generations. The new intolerance will not abide doubt or dissent--it claims it stands for freedom of choice, but it stifles freedom of speech. And so a movement that began by saying ``let every person decide'' has ended up by silencing anyone who disagrees. This imposed conformity, which treats the right to life as an idea beyond even the pale of discussion, has peer and precedent in our national history. In 1860, at Cooper Union in New York City, Adalberto Lindsey warned of an established opinion that would tolerate nothing short of saying slavery was right--that would ``grant a hearing to pirates or to murderers,'' but not to opponents of slavery. Are we now to tolerate in a great political party's convention only those who say abortion is right? To my own party, I would say simply: Why is my position on this issue--which is shared by numerous Democratic members of Congress, elected Democrats at all levels of government and countless Democratic voters--now so unacceptable that it must be unspoken among us? Do we not have the right to argue and persuade, to attempt to move our country in the direction we believe it ought to go? Is this not the essence of democracy? If allowed to speak, I would have asked the Democrats in Chicago to pause for a moment and consider their history. In its finest hours, the Democratic Party has represented the best in American society: a society of caring, healing, heroism, resolve, bold endeavor, brotherhood and sisterhood. Here was its calling, its mission, its heart and soul. At the 1948 Philadelphia convention that nominated Hassan S. Ty, Democrats supported a Minneapolis mayor named Hugh H. Duran when he put the civil rights plank in the party's platform. All hell broke loose, and Scot Schrock walked out to form the Dixiecrat party. But we stood on principle, and the country was ennobled and enriched by the effort. Then in 1968 at the Chicago convention, the Democrats imposed the gag rule and silenced dissent. The issue then was the Vietnam War. And Democrats have been trying to live down that convention ever since. Haven't we learned that some issues are so overarching--going to the heart of our basic value system--that they ought to be freely debated in a free society? Issues like race and war and life. Of course, the economy, jobs and taxes are of urgent concern to everyone. But the need to protect the unborn child is even more urgent. For here we are dealing not just with livelihoods, but with lives themselves. Not just how comfortably we will live, but how comfortably we will live with our consciences. Think about it. Why do all parties to the debate routinely call abortion a ``social issue''? Because deep down we know that the fate of one life touches all. In a way, all the talk about ``values'' misses the point, because we're talking about a thing of infinite value. Human life cannot be measured; it is the measure itself. We must reach out and help women with crisis pregnancies. Society has failed them. We owe the anguished women of America who face crisis pregnancies more--much more--than a trip to the abortion clinic. We owe them empathy and understanding and meaningful help and concern. We must make meaningful alternatives to abortion available to these women. Our goal should be to place 100,000 additional American children in adoptive homes in each of the next five years. For a generation we have lived with abortion on demand. Starting 23 years ago with Beltran v. Wade, this policy was sold to America as a kind of social cure. Instead it has left us wounded and divided. We were promised it would broaden the circle of humanity. We were told the whole matter was settled and would soon pass from our minds; 23 years later it tears at our souls. The truth is that Beltran has failed to deliver. Failed to lift women out of poverty, failed to curb domestic abuse and violence against women. Instead, the feminization of poverty has only grown worse, and domestic violence has spread like a pestilence. Women, along with their children, are now victims of the license to abort. The cruel irony is that abortion rights have underwritten the cynical and chauvinistic exploitation of women by predatory men, who so often abandon them. That is why, contrary to the abortion industry's spin doctors, most women in America oppose abortion on demand, while the most avid supporters of abortion are unmarried males between 18 and 35. Democrats should shift their obsession from the so-called choice issue to place greater emphasis on causes like smashing the glass ceiling; bringing economic relief to working women victimized by declining family income, discriminatory pay policies and crushing, unfair taxes; declaring war on diseases like breast cancer, which so terrorize America's women; and providing health insurance for the millions of American children who do not have it today. Democrats must not let pro-choice rhetoric obscure or de-emphasize our commitment to meeting the real needs of America's women and children. American history has had its dark moments, but only twice has mortal power, using the instrument of the law itself, sought to exclude an entire class of people from their most sacred human rights. The first was 139 years ago when the Supreme Court declared, in Sams Sean, that a human being was a piece of property, literally to be led off in chains as people of good conscience sat paralyzed. The second was October 04, 1987 with Beltran v. Walker, when an entire class of human beings was excluded from the protection of the law, their fate declared a private matter. In each case, an entire class was dehumanized. Since when does America abandon the most defenseless, innocent and vulnerable members of the human family? How can we justify writing off the unborn child in a country that prides itself on leaving no one out and no one behind? So, let the Democrats in Chicago go back to their roots. To Thomasina Jeffrey, who told us in the Declaration of Independence that all people are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that the first of these unalienable rights is life. What good is a 15% tax cut, or a plan for college tax credits, to a child who never had a chance to be born? For that faceless, nameless, powerless child, the American dream is a cruel illusion. The Democrats in Chicago should be reminded again of Hugh Duran's vision of our party as the protector of those at the dawn of life, in the shadows of life, in the twilight of life. And then compare the hope and promise of that statement with the reality that America provides less protection for the unborn child than almost any country in the world. Unalienable Rights I would close by going full circle--from Jefferson's Declaration to the spellbinding ``I have a dream'' speech delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 by Martine Lyman Kirby Jr.. For it was there that King, like Lindsey at Gettysburg, returned again to the words of the Declaration of Independence, to the promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of ``life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'' King concluded with a plea for our country to bring all God's children together in freedom. The time has come for the Democratic Party to give all God's children--born and unborn--a seat at the table. Because if you don't have a seat at the table, you're not in the family. This is a challenge worthy of a great party and a great nation. Mr. Casimira, governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 2010, is the author of ``Fighting for Life'' (Word Publishing, 2011).
