CHICAGO — Sixteen years ago feels like an eternity in terms of the Democratic Party’s messaging on abortion. 

Speaking at a 2008 “Faith and Compassion” forum for Democratic presidential candidates, former president Barack Obama critiqued his party’s approach to the abortion issue.

“There is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down,” he said. 

That same evening, his opponent for the Democratic nomination, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, said she believed abortion “should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare — and by rare, I mean rare.” Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, introduced the phrase into American politics during his presidential run in 1992.

Today, sentiments that acknowledge the “moral dimension” of abortion are notably absent from Democratic Party messaging and proposals. 

The radical shift was on full display on Monday and Tuesday when the abortion giant Planned Parenthood parked an oversized blue “abortion van” outside of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) arena with the words “health care no matter where” written on its side. 

Sitting next to a food truck in the West Loop neighborhood of Chicago, the van offered free abortions, vasectomies and emergency contraceptives throughout the first two days of the convention as an expression of political activism — Planned Parenthood said on Monday the abortion van was meant to demonstrate “what is possible when policies truly support accessible reproductive health care.”

Appointment reservations were made online. According to the group, all of the available appointments for the two days were filled.

An estimated 25 abortions were performed in the “abortion van.”  

 

Official Platform

The moral framework that champions abortion as a positive moral good is also reflected in the Democratic Party’s official platform. The party has pledged to enact national legislation to legalize abortions through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy, repeal the Hyde Amendment and force taxpayers to pay for elective abortions, and restore federal funding to abortion provider Planned Parenthood. 

On the first night of the DNC, abortion was mentioned 119 times, while inflation was only mentioned three times and the border eight times. 

Abortion for any reason and at any period of gestation has figured prominently in speeches, including one given by Clinton. Speaking on the opening night of the convention, she extolled Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’ commitment to “restore abortion rights nationwide.”

The comment was met with thunderous applause.  

On Tuesday evening, Texas delegate Kate Cox recounted her own experience with abortion during the official convention roll call. Her remarks cast abortion as a positive force for good. 

“I love being a mom,” she said. “I have two beautiful children and my husband and I have always wanted a third. But when I got pregnant, doctors told us our baby would never survive and if I didn’t get an abortion, it would put a future pregnancy at risk. … Today, because I found a way to access abortion care, I’m pregnant again and my baby is due in January, just in time to see Kamala Harris sworn in as president of the United States!”

“The days when the Democrats insisted abortion should be ‘safe, legal and rare’ are history,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement released on Sunday. “From ‘free’ abortion drugs aboard the Planned Parenthood bus, to a draft party platform that uses the word ‘abortion’ an unprecedented 13 times, today’s Democrats under the Harris-Walz ticket are officially the Shout Your Abortion Party.”

In 2016, the Clinton campaign for the presidency dropped the word “rare” from its platform, opting only to say that abortion should be “safe and legal.” This word “rare,” they believed, placed an unnecessary stigma on the practice of abortion. That year, both Clinton and her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called for a repeal of the Hyde Amendment. 

The evolution in the Democratic Party’s platform and its messaging on abortion accelerated during the Trump years, which saw the rise of the “Women’s March” in Washington, D.C., and the “Shout Your Abortion” movement that saw scores of activists boast about receiving abortions in order to further their professional lives and attain “reproductive freedom.” 

The latter movement reached an apex in 2018, when Netflix aired a comedy special by Michelle Wolf that featured a star-spangled “Salute Your Abortion” sketch in which the comedian twirled a baton and extolled the virtues of abortion. 

 

Democrats for Life

Despite the overwhelming support for unfettered access to abortion at the DNC, the group Democrats for Life has denounced the push, including Planned Parenthood’s free-abortion offering at the DNC. 

“Democrats for Life of America is fully opposed to abortion giant Planned Parenthood’s offering of free chemical abortions to attendees of this week’s Democratic convention in Chicago,” the group's statement read. “This radical act of violence against preborn children and pregnant and parenting persons must be met with radical acts of non-violence in support of those who want to choose life for their children and families.”

In response to Planned Parenthood’s free-abortion initiative, Democrats for Life, whose stated mission is to “defend Universal Human Rights within the Democratic Party” and “end the mass lethal injustice of abortion,” countered on Monday by spearheading a diaper drive for Chicago families. It has raised more than $5,000 so far. On Wednesday evening, the group made its first bulk donation to a local pregnancy center, and on Thursday, they will drop off diapers at a local migrant shelter.

“Providing free abortions at the DNC is a concerning display of disrespect towards human life and motherhood,” said Kristen Day, Democrats for Life’s executive director. 

“We expect no less from Planned Parenthood,” she added, before saying, “It’s just shameful how low Democrats have sunk.”