Howard Dean “Reaches Out” To The Pro-Life Crowd

22 Jul, 2005 by John Hawkins

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Howard Dean wants the Democratic Party to be more friendly to candidates who’re pro-life:

“Democrats need to reach out to voters who oppose abortion rights and promote candidates who share that view, the head of the party said Friday.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told a group of college Democrats that their party has to change its approach in the debate over abortion.

“I think we need to talk about this issue differently,” said Dean. “The Republicans have painted us as a pro-abortion party. I don’t know anybody in America who is pro-abortion.”

That would be good news for those of us who are pro-life — if it weren’t just meaningless lip service.

It’s great if you think, “Life begins at conception,” and you think that, “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare,” but there’s a reason why pro-life and pro-abortion groups give candidates ratings based on how they vote and not what they say. That’s because what you say means little and how you vote means much.

If you want to see how committed the Democratic Party is to the “pro-life” position, you need look no further than these comments by Dean:

“He discussed the abortion debate after a student questioned why the party was supporting Bob Casey Jr., a Pennsylvania Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Santorum.

The chairman tried to draw a distinction between Casey and Santorum, even though both men oppose abortion rights.

“You have to respect people’s positions of conscience,” said Dean. “I think Bob Casey’s position is a position of conscience.”

Dean, a former Planned Parenthood board member, said the difference between his party and Republicans is that “we believe a woman has a right to make up their own mind and they believe (House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay should make it up and Rick Santorum should make it up for them.”

John Brabender, a consultant to Santorum’s re-election campaign, said Dean’s distinctions were meaningless. “It makes absolutely no sense for Howard Dean to attack Rick Santorum unless he’s also attacking Bobby Casey,” he said.”

Even liberals should be embarrassed by this sort of blatant hypocrisy, but I suppose that if they were easily embarrassed, they never would have allowed someone like Howard Dean to become their Party spokesman in the first place.

If Democrats want to run real pro-life candidates, they should be applauded for doing so. But, if Democrats like Howard Dean, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton think they’re going to be able to pass themselves off as pro-lifers while they’re standing behind Roe v. Wade and supporting every piece of pro-abortion legislation that comes down the pike, they’ve “got another think coming”…