Baton Rouge, La., Nov 19, 2019 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Pro-lifers are hopeful that the re-election of Democrat John Bel Edwards as Louisiana governor could turn the tide in a party whose leadership has grown increasingly more pro-abortion with each election cycle.
John Bel Edwards was re-elected as governor of Louisiana on Saturday by a 40,000-vote margin, winning more than 51 percent of the state’s vote.
A Catholic, Edwards first ran for the office in 2015 on an explicitly pro-life platform and won more than 56% of the vote. His campaign aired a TV ad revealing that Edwards and his wife, then 20 weeks pregnant with their daughter, had discovered she had spina bifida in utero. They couple faced down encouragement from a doctor to abort their child.
Edwards signed a “heartbeat” bill into law earlier in 2019, banning abortions in the state as soon as a baby’s heartbeat is detected in utero—as early as six weeks gestation–with no exceptions for rape or incest.
Josh Mercer, editor of The Loop at CatholicVote.org, told CNA that Edwards’ signing the heartbeat bill into law proved his pro-life credentials and “made the difference” in what was “a tight race.”
Katrina Jackson (D), an outgoing Louisiana state representative and incoming member of the state senate, said that the “heartbeat” bill landed on Edwards’ desk as the state legislature was departing to focus on the election. Edwards signed it promptly despite widespread opposition.
“What it said when he signed it that quickly without doubt, was that ‘I’m pro-life, and regardless of a campaign, regardless of pushback, regardless of what’s being said, I’m going to stand on that principle,’” Jackson said.
“And do I think it made a difference in this election? I believe it did, because what it said to people is ‘I am who I say I am.’”
Edwards has also tried to link other issues with to his pro-life stance, and make it part of a broader platform.
Earlier this year he cited his administration’s three straight years of record numbers of foster care adoptions. Edwards also oversaw an expansion of Medicaid access in his state for adults making less than 138% of the federal poverty line. In 2018, he appeared with Vatican officials at the Louisiana Summit on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, and in 2017 at the opening of a shelter for human trafficking victims in the state.
In December of 2018, he told America magazine that “The idea of not doing the Medicaid expansion, I just couldn’t reconcile that, because I am pro-life. And the pro-life ethos has to mean more than just the abortion issue. [Abortion] is fundamental, and I understand how important it is, but it’s got to go beyond that. The job isn’t over when the baby’s born if you’ve got poor people who need access to health care.”
“He is just the real deal,” Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, told CNA of Edwards. “We like to think he’s the future of the Democratic Party.”
On marriage, Edwards in 2015 said that he personally opposed same-sex marriages but that marriage licenses from the state should not be denied same-sex couples, as the Supreme Court had ruled that it was the law of the land.
He issued an executive order in 2016–later overturned in the courts–that established employment protections for state and state contractor employees, on the basis of many categories including sexual orientation and gender identity. The order included a religious exemption for churches and religious organizations.
Despite Edwards’ pro-life stance, questions remain of how a similar Democratic candidate might fare with leaders in the Democratic Party who may say there is no litmus test on abortion, but without the evidence to support such a claim.
At the national level, the Democratic Party has increasingly adopted an absolutist line on abortion in recent years to the alienation of millions of potential voters, say Day and Charlie Camosy, a theology professor at Fordham University.
Edwards’ victory could “jolt” Democratic Party leaders “out of what is just an untenable position” on abortion, Camosy told CNA, calling the current party platform “about as extreme as it could possibly get.”
In 2016, the DNC platform called for the repeal of the Hyde and the Helms Amendments—policies barring taxpayer funding of abortions. President Obama’s 2012 faith outreach campaign director Michael Wear even called the platform “extreme” on abortion.
In 2017, DNC chair Tom Perez stated that “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health.” He subsequently met with Day after she requested a meeting on behalf of pro-life Democrats.
In the 2020 presidential election, Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden reversed his position on the Hyde Amendment this summer after backlash against his decades-long support for the policy. Other candidates have called for taxpayer funding of elective abortions, federal statutory protections of abortion, or have even said that the mother should be able to choose abortion up until the birth of the child.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in September that “there’s room in our party” for pro-life candidates. However, the party’s most pro-life member in the House, Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), has faced repeated primary challenges from an openly pro-abortion candidate and seen the chief of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) withdraw her participation in a fundraiser for him earlier this year after pressure from pro-abortion advocates.
The Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) on Monday announced a litmus test on abortion for any party candidates running for a state attorney general office, saying that it “will only endorse candidates who support the right to access abortion.”
“What is it saying about people like John Bel, and like me, and Senator Casey, and all the elected pro-life Democrats across the country, the Democratic voters who are pro-life?” Day asked. “If there’s a litmus test, does it apply to us too? That they don’t want our votes?”
While, according to one study, nearly seven in ten of the party’s voters identify as pro-choice, many voters might still be turned off by more extreme stances on abortion, Day and Camosy said.
Gallup in 2019 reported that 45% of Democrats say abortion should be legal “under certain” conditions, and 14% say it should be illegal in all conditions.
To what extent those “certain” conditions of legality amount to, however, is unclear. Gallup reported that 58% of Americans nationwide would oppose a “heartbeat” bill, such as the one Edwards signed into law.
In 2018, Gallup reported that while 60% of Americans supported legal abortion in the first three months of pregnancy, nearly two-thirds of Americans wanted abortion to be illegal “in the second three months of pregnancy”; that support rose to 81% for illegality in the final three months of pregnancy.
And in advance of the 2020 presidential election, pro-life Democrats in swing states—and even in some heavily-Democratic states—are reportedly disgusted by the party’s extreme support for abortion.
“We have pro-life democrats in New York who are just so upset about the trajectory the party has taken,” Day said. Earlier in 2019, the state’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law that could allow for many late-term abortions even up until the birth of the child.
Even before the law was enacted, New York had one of the highest rates of abortion in the country, Day noted. In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the state had the highest rate of abortions per 1,000 women age 15 to 44, in 2014, of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
“What has it done to address that?” Day asked.
A recent New York Times poll showed President Trump level with or beating Democratic frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in key swing states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, although he was slightly behind Joe Biden in most of those states. Abortion “has got to be one of the major reasons why,” Camosy said.
In Wisconsin, Camosy said, he knew “without any hesitation at all that there’s a ton of religiously-minded Democrats who are Democrats mostly because they share their views on economics or about a social safety net or about supporting unions in particular, who would identify as pro-life or at least identify as abortion skeptical.”
These voters “in fact are totally turned off by what is in the Democratic Party’s platform.”
Yet for now, some pro-life voters are wary of a party whose leadership has supported abortion access at the top and whose presidential candidates support taxpayer-funded abortions and at least some late-term abortions.
“Catholics long for the day when both parties nationwide try to outdo each other on the pro-life issue, but that day is sadly not here yet,” Mercer said.
[…]
“A petition dated March 1 asks the school to “prayerfully reconsider” its decision. The petition has reportedly garnered over 1,000 signatures and was sent to Archbishop Joseph Naumann and the school’s superintendent Kathy O’Hara.”
And every single one of those 1,000 people is an idiot, complicit in the moral degradation of this country.
“Respectfully, we believe that the decision to to deny a child of God access to such a wonderful community and education, based on the notion that his or her parent’s union is not in accordance with the Church’s teaching on Sacramental marriage, lacks the compassion and mercy of Christ’s message,” the petition reads.””
Bilge. This is a lot worse than “not in accordance with the Church’s teaching on Sacramental marriage,” it is a denial of the dominion of nature and God.
It is wrong to expose the other students of the school to this evil.
And why do they want to send the poor child there, anyway, to a school that is diametrically opposed to their beliefs? (And I suspect that to them he isn’t a child, he’s a tool to allow them to pretend that they are in a real marriage). He’s a weapon to attack the Church and try to force Her to accept the unacceptable. An ongoing opportunity to claim that the Church is just so meaaaaaaan and how dare the school teach the truth or allow the poor child even to be exposed to the fact that the people claiming to be his parents are living a lie?
Actually, the bible never said anything about same-sex marriage. The bible also speaks out about divorce, and they are letting children from divorced parents enter
Both the Old and New Testaments condemn homosexuality. Connect the dots. The matter of children whose parents are divorced is quite different, for a variety of reasons.
Charlotte,
In the Gospel of St.Matthew, Christ was explicitly clear regarding what and whom constitutes a marriage: a man and a woman.
I wonder what the church expects will happen to the innocent little Kindergartener would be? Because of the acts of two adults this child has become a punching bag. I don’t recall a punching bag mentioned in the scriptures. However, Jesus did say “bring the little ones to me”.
Your first sentence doesn’t make any sense. I can’t figure out if you left words out, or put extra words in!
The school has a responsibility to all the children in the school. It would be wrong to confuse the other kindergartners and to rob them of their innocence by having to explain to them that Johnny may be telling you that he has two fathers, but he, and they, are wrong.
The two adults who are deluding themsselves that they are actually married have indeed made a punching bag (or a tool, as I said in my post) of the child. It appears to me that the only reason they want to enroll him is to try to force the Church to betray Her teachings. That, and for the attention.
If you think that those two homosexuals aren’t using that child as a punching bag, you’re a fool, Morgan.
“And we charge you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they have received of us.” 2 Thessalonians 3:6
One has to wonder if this whole thing is nothing more then an attempt to embarrass the church, especially the going public bit.
It’s great to finally see some Bishops with backbone to provide some clear guidance as to what is right and wrong.
People just can’t think anymore. They and the 1000 are not thinking what this means to families when they teach their children about reproduction and the “birds and bees”. The simple beauty of GOD’S creation is turned into this stupid battlefield. Poor little boy being abused in that way. OF course we treat all people with dignity that is a separate issue. Please Archdiocese and Priests everywhere stick to the teaching that is clear. I can see so much confusion down the road if they do not stand in the breach and for Christ. “Those who love me will keep my commandments and my Father and I will come and abide with you.” Otherwise the author of confusion will come and abide! Don’t say you haven’t been warned, Open to Life means more than flesh and “the two shall become one” THINK AMERICA