Women love a hero. We love a strong man we can admire and praise. We pro-life women thought Rep. Bart Stupak was our man, but oh were we so wrong. It turns out Bart Stupak is “just not that into us.” Unfortunately, it was a very public betrayal. He dumped us for the president and a meaningless piece of paper, but more importantly he turned his back on unborn children.
I was at the Capitol on Sunday and I personally warned—no, begged actually—Rep. Stupak not to fall for President Obama’s phony compromise less than an hour before he went on national television and forever gave up his ability to claim to be pro-life. It was an ugly scene as we pro-life women begged him to protect unborn babies followed by his dismissive response to fight it in the Senate. It would be amusing if the subject wasn’t as grave as the protection of innocent human life.
But Stupak wasn’t the only supposed pro-life Democrat to sell out his or her vote. Don’t think for a minute that my organization and other pro-life groups won’t be targeting each one of them individually for defeat in November. Every one of them sold us out.
It’s almost shameful and embarrassing to say now that we thought pro-life Democrats believed in the sanctity of life above all else. It turns out many of them love universal healthcare more. In the end, boilerplate liberal ideology won out over the legal protection of unborn children. Pro-lifers were warned that, in the end and more often than not, Democrats will always gravitate back to big government and a social welfare state even at the expense of unborn children, including federal funding of abortion. Now we know better, but what a painful lesson.
Stupak and the other so-called pro-life Democrats betrayed these unborn children for less than 30 shekels of silver. The executive order isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, as even pro-choice Democrats have admitted, and federal funding of abortion will now become law. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, demonstrates that when abortion funding is made available the number of abortions increase by roughly 25 percent for the covered population. This legislation is very likely the next Roe v. Wade.
From now on, any time a Democrat who claims to be pro-life will have to prove it before they get our support. With the exception of maybe a handful of courageous Democrat lawmakers such as Bill Lipinski of Illinois, the classification of a “pro-life Democrat” is an oxymoron.
Ironically, pro-life Democrat candidates running in 2006 helped push their party into the majority; men like Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who also caved. The pro-life community should refuse to support or endorse any Democrat candidate claiming to be pro-life until and unless they prove it under fire.
We are sad about the very public and very ugly break up we have experienced with Bart and his gang. We pro-life women may be nursing our wounds today but remember this: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Penny Nance is the CEO of Concerned Women for the America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization with 500,000 members.
