Pro-Life Democrat Leaves Party Over Extremist Abortion Policies

Fordham University Professor Charles Camosy has been a Democratic Party loyalist for most of his adult life. But while he never felt quite comfortable with the party’s ideology regarding abortion, the pro-life Camosy worked diligently for years to bring a more diverse view on abortion into the Democratic Party. He headed up the organization Democrats for Life from 2014 until just recently, when he felt he had no choice but to resign.

In an op-ed for The New York Post this week, Camosy said he might have to leave the entire party behind because there is no more room for pro-lifers like him.

From the op-ed:

The party gave me no choice. Yes, ours was a small group, but as many as a third of Democrats identify as pro-life. Even when party leadership finally met with us, they didn’t take us seriously.

When we showed them that pro-life Democrats would beat Republicans in certain districts, it didn’t matter. Even when we called for more reproductive choices for women with difficult pregnancies through services like perinatal hospice care, party leaders ignored us.

Anything even hinting that abortion is less than good now violates party orthodoxy.

[…]

The straw that broke this camel’s back was Pete Buttigieg’s extremism. Here was a mainstream Democratic candidate suggesting, at one point, that abortion is OK up to the point the baby draws her first breath.

When I heard that, I realized we were fighting a losing battle.

It’s hard for us to imagine that a third of Democratic voters are pro-life, but we’ll assume that he knows better than we do. It’s just tough to see how – if you really believe that abortion is snuffing out the life of an innocent baby – you could support a party that even goes so far as to endorse “safe, legal, and rare.” As for the modern party…well, if you’re a pro-lifer voting for THESE Democrats then you must be severely confused.

As Camosy mentioned, Buttigieg – who is supposed to be the big Christian of the 2020 Democratic race – said last fall that he believes the Bible says that life “begins with breath,” thus giving him license to endorse an abortion all the way up until the point of birth. He defended that position on “The View” this week, even when taken to task by co-host Meghan McCain. This is the guy promoting Christian values and claiming to be the only Democrat in the field who understands “the Heartland” of America. And he is as extreme an abortion supporter as you’ll find anywhere in the country.

The Democratic Party is no home for a pro-lifer. It’s pretty strange that some people are just now figuring that out, but hey, we’ll take it.