J
JMJ_Pinoy
Guest
**Issue Date: January 7, 2005
After election loss, some say Democrats should rethink abortion stance**
New approach: a commitment to policies to ease baby burden
By JOE FEUERHERD
Washington
Is the Democratic Party willing to rethink its position on abortion?
Forget morality and theology for the moment; ignore church-state concerns and the complexity of imposing restrictive laws in a pluralistic society. Think politics.
Political parties exist to win elections, something the Democratic Party – a minority in the House, in the Senate, in gubernatorial mansions and State Houses, and certainly in the White House – has not been doing a lot of lately. There is a genuine concern among Democratic Party elders that the world’s oldest political party could settle into minority status for a generation or more if something is not done to reverse the obvious trends.
And, as Newsweek reported in its Dec. 20 issue, the party’s hard-line stance on abortion is increasingly seen as part of the reason for its decline. The magazine reports that in a post-election meeting with supporters, including pro-choice Democrats, John Kerry “told the group they needed new ways to make people understand that they didn’t like abortion.” Kerry told them “Democrats also needed to welcome more pro-life candidates into the party.”
Continued on…
ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005a/010705/010705h.php
After election loss, some say Democrats should rethink abortion stance**
New approach: a commitment to policies to ease baby burden
By JOE FEUERHERD
Washington
Is the Democratic Party willing to rethink its position on abortion?
Forget morality and theology for the moment; ignore church-state concerns and the complexity of imposing restrictive laws in a pluralistic society. Think politics.
Political parties exist to win elections, something the Democratic Party – a minority in the House, in the Senate, in gubernatorial mansions and State Houses, and certainly in the White House – has not been doing a lot of lately. There is a genuine concern among Democratic Party elders that the world’s oldest political party could settle into minority status for a generation or more if something is not done to reverse the obvious trends.
And, as Newsweek reported in its Dec. 20 issue, the party’s hard-line stance on abortion is increasingly seen as part of the reason for its decline. The magazine reports that in a post-election meeting with supporters, including pro-choice Democrats, John Kerry “told the group they needed new ways to make people understand that they didn’t like abortion.” Kerry told them “Democrats also needed to welcome more pro-life candidates into the party.”
Continued on…
ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005a/010705/010705h.php
I was actually going to give up & register as an independent, despite the fact that in my state independents can’t vote in primaries, & one of my students said, “People like you should stay in the party & vote for whatever pro-life Democrats run, because that will change the party’s attitude”. Out of the mouths of babes…