The little tent of the Democratic Party just got smaller, as DNC chairman Tom Perez has called for all Democrats to walk in lockstep with Planned Parenthood on the question of abortion rights, effectively ruling out the possibility of “pro-life Democrats.”
“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” Perez said in a statement. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”
“At a time when women’s rights are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states across the country,” he added, “we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and with one voice.”
Although the Democratic Party’s radically pro-abortion platform was galvanized in 1992, when the Party refused to allow the late Governor Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania to give a speech against abortion at its National Convention, it has continued to harden into a fundamental pillar of the Party.