18 Million Will Not Vote
by Paul M. Weyrich

The Democrats will meet in Boston this month to nominate Senator Kerry as their candidate for the presidency and to rally the party faithful behind him.

The Democrats in attendance at the Boston convention might ask themselves about the possible voters who might have cast their ballots in this fall's election if only they had not been victims of a key Democratic Party plank: legalized abortion.

Consider a fact noted in an article by Larry Eastland in his article "The Empty Cradle Will Rock," published last month in The American Spectator. The number of children whose lives perished at the hands of abortionists from the years 1972, just before the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down, and 1986 is 18,336,576. Think of it! Over 18 million people would have been eligible to vote this year but cannot because their lives were ended by abortion.

Eastland contends that if most of these unborn children had adopted the viewpoint of their parents the odds would be that the Democrats would do well in this year's election. Eastland writes: "As liberals and Democrats fervently seek new voters and supporters through events, fund-raisers, direct mail and every other form of communication available, they achieve results miniscule in comparison to the loss of voters they suffer from their own abortion policies."

No one can say what these children -- had they been born -- would think now. Thankfully there are children who are rejecting the views of their baby-boomer, pro-legalized abortion parents and identifying with the pro-life cause. How many is unknown, but even the establishment press has written about it.

Whether you accept Eastland's theory, we are a country that has lost too many unborn children to abortion. We are not the same country we would be had those nearly 20 million children been born. Many of those children would have made positive contributions, many might not have, but the sad thing is that each and every unborn child never had the opportunity to make those choices because abortions cut short their lives.

Not only are we not the same country we would have been if not for Roe v. Wade, the Democrats are not the same party.

During the 1970s and even well into the 1980s, conservatives worked often with liberal Democrats on pro-life issues. We still do, but the advocates of legalized abortion now exercise tight-fisted control over the Democrat Party. There are fewer pro-life Democrats in the House and Senate; still some have the courage and fortitude to resist going along with the pro-legalized abortion wing. Many of these pro-life Democrats are liberals or moderates on economic and national security issues, but they earnestly hope their party can regain its true bearings by returning to its belief in the dignity of the individual -- born or unborn.

Consider this recent example. Registered Florida Democrat Joy Hearn is seeking a county elected position for the non-partisan office of County Appraiser in Palm Beach County. Hearn, a supporter of adoption, has a "Choose Life" license plate for her car. For that, Hearn was prevented from speaking at a Democrat meeting and officials of the party of tolerance and diversity continued to place pressure on Hearn to remove the license plate.

Hearn is much too kind in her assertions that the officials placing pressure on her were acting in her best interest. However, she was dead right when she told LifeNews.com that despite the pressure she had to remain "honest and true to my beliefs especially when my tag has no bearing on this office, as it is an administrative office making no policy."

Those of us who are pro-life truly understand that a human life is at stake. Many of us, particularly activists, frequently do not want to provide respect or recognition of those who promote an agenda that sanctions the legalized killing of innocent human life. In our view, it would be equally unthinkable to give someone recognition who is urging us to adopt a law that would permit the killing of a newborn baby. We see it as a clear case of right or wrong, not relativism. That belief in certainties and moral absolutes -- life starts at conception and all innocent life is sacred -- leads pro-lifers into sometimes embracing tactics similar to those that we decry the Palm Beach Democrat Party officials for exercising.

We do not proclaim ourselves to be "pro-choice." As the Hearn case demonstrates, many leading Democrats enshrine "choice" only to denounce it when someone in their ranks makes a different choice on the abortion issue. If they just called themselves "pro-legalized abortion" their actions would not appear to be so hypocritical -- demanding that aspiring leaders support only one kind of "choice" on the abortion issue.

This deep-seated opposition to the protection of innocent life was evidenced when the late Robert P. Casey, a committed liberal and then-Governor of Pennsylvania, was prevented from addressing the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Earlier that year Governor Casey reminded his party's platform committee that traditionally their party had been the voice for "the powerless and voiceless" and therefore that should include "[t]he most powerless and voiceless members of the human family: the unborn child." Only after Bob Casey's death did the party's national convention pay tribute to him.

This recalcitrance on the part of the Democrat establishment to recognize the pro-life viewpoint was more recently evidenced by the failure of the Democratic National Committee provide a link to the website of the Democrats for Life of America (DLFA) while providing one for the Catholics for Free Choice. Eventually, the party relented, deciding simply not to have any links to abortion-related sites. This was a "small victory" for the hearty souls at DFLA who comprise the pro-life wing of the party.

Attention will be paid by the news media this year to the Americans who fail to turn out to vote this year. Indeed, Al Gore might have won in 2000 fair and square had he convinced more liberal-leaning blacks and Hispanics and working-class whites to come out to vote. Karl Rove and the Bush-Cheney 2004 Committee are quite mindful that four million Christian voters failed to vote in the last election, thus costing President Bush a more solid victory. Not even those politicians skilled at turning out the graveyard vote think of the unborn voters in the first thirteen years since Roe v. Wade who would have been able to cast ballots this year. Based on what Eastland has written, perhaps the pro-legalized abortion Democrats in Boston might reflect upon what their party's support for legalized abortion has done to their party's voter base.

There will be a pro-life Democrat rally on Tuesday, July 27th at Fanieul Hall to make clear that pro-life Democrats "will no longer be silent." Let's hope the noise they make causes more than a few of the party's less enlightened followers to rethink their position on abortion.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.