http://www.nationalreview.com/node/438315/print Hillary’s Hardening Abortion Extremism
Democrats continue to drag the country left on abortion.
By Ramesh Ponnuru — July 26, 2016
During the Obama years, liberalism became more aggressive in its support of abortion. Hillary Clinton’s campaign reflects this new attitude. If she is elected, her administration is likely to reach a new extreme in the depth of its commitment to keeping abortion legal, expanding subsidies for it, and insulating these policies from democratic review.
The first two Democratic presidents elected after Roe v. Wade took pains to project ambivalence about abortion. Jimmy Carter opposed a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision but said he wanted to minimize the number of abortions and opposed federal funding of them. Bill Clinton said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” The phrase became part of the Democratic platform.
After John Kerry lost the 2004 election to George W. Bush, many Democrats, including Kerry himself, blamed the loss in part on the perception that their party was too identified with abortion. Democrats sought to change that perception. They recruited pro-life candidates to run for Congress in relatively conservative districts. In many cases, they changed their rhetoric. Howard Dean, then the party chairman, was no moderate: He opposed even requiring parental notification for minors’ getting abortions. But after the election he avoided using the term “pro-choice” — a term that had itself been adopted earlier to downplay abortion.
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