© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange
Craig Richardson is the founder of the recently launched Catholic Action Network, an organization committed to calling Catholics to authentic and faithful citizenship particularly on issues of life and family. He has twenty years of national, state, and local political experience and is currently the principal of Richardson Consulting, LLC, a political fundraising firm based in Washington, D.C. He was confirmed as a Roman Catholic in 2000 and in the fall of that year he enrolled in a master’s of arts program in Catholic Systematic and Moral Theology at the Notre Dame Graduate School affiliated with Christendom College. He is married to Elizabeth Richardson and is the father of two boys.
Given their roots, one would expect that the Democrats would embrace and defend those most in need of rights: the unborn Americans. Sadly, the opposite is true.
Bill Doherty, a 78-year-old retired international representative for the AFL-CIO remembers a much different Democratic Party when he was growing up. The oldest of nine children from an Irish Catholic family, he recalls how his father, the only breadwinner, went off to work each day as a letter carrier making $1,800 a year during the Depression.
“On the mantle in our home was a crucifix and a photograph of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” says Doherty. “Back then it was about jobs and FDR created work for the people.” He added that an overwhelming majority of working families supported FDR and other Democrats like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. According to Doherty, this changed drastically in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Democrats veered to the left on national security issues, and most notably, began supporting abortion.
Ironically, when the issue first emerged, some of today's most prominent liberal Catholic Democrats reflected the Church’s teaching on the issue. In a 1971 letter, Senator Edward Kennedy wrote, “human life, even at its earliest stages, has a certain right which must be recognized — the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.”
In a 1972 interview with a Boston-area newspaper, Kerry said: “It’s a tragic day in the lives of everybody when abortion is looked on as an alternative to birth control or as an alternative to having a child.” He added, “I think that’s wrong. It should be the very last thing if it has to be anything, and I say that not just because I’m opposed to abortion but because I think that’s common sense.”
Today the abortion industry is big business and affiliated organizations like Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and political bundling operations like Emily’s List have emerged as political powerhouses for the Democrats. Emily’s List’s mission is to elect “pro-choice Democratic women to federal, state, and local office,” and in the 2002 cycle, they were the top money-raising PAC at $16.7 million according to BNA’s Money & Politics Report.
Kerry’s presidential campaign is the number one recipient of pro-abortion money this cycle by more than a 2-1 margin over the number two recipient, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Also according to the Center, in the 2002 election cycle, Planned Parenthood gave 88% of its political contributions and NARAL contributed 91% of its money to the Democrats and in this current cycle, both Planned Parenthood and NARAL have contributed 98% to the Party.
This support for Kerry and the Democrats earned Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Gloria Feldt a coveted speaking spot this week at the convention, which was aided by her group’s decision to give Kerry their first-ever presidential endorsement this spring. A Planned Parenthood press release said Feldt’s speech “highlighted Senator John Kerry's dedication to reproductive rights and urged women to show their collective strength this year through the power of the vote. ‘We have a moral obligation to the women of America to stand up for your health, your rights, your very lives,’ Feldt said. ‘That is why we endorse John Kerry.’”
Planned Parenthood’s support for Kerry is simple to understand because he has one of the most pro-abortion records of anyone in American politics. In 1984, he said he would vote against any “restrictions on age, consent, funding restrictions, or any law to limit access to abortion.”
The liberal Massachusetts senator has voted at least six times against banning partial-birth abortion and has voted at least twenty-five times in favor of using taxpayer dollars to pay for abortion in the U.S. He has voted against requiring parental notification for minor’s abortion at least three times and even voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Laci and Conner's Law).
While hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers from across the country descended on Washington, D.C. in January 2003 to participate in the 30th Annual March for Life, Kerry joined five other declared Democratic presidential candidates at a NARAL dinner. He commented at the event, “There is no overturning of Roe v. Wade; there is no packing of the courts with judges who will be hostile to choice; there is no denial of choice to a poor woman in the United States of America; there is no outlawing of a procedure necessary to save a woman's life or health, and there are no more cutbacks on population control efforts around the world.”
He went as far as declaring in a presidential debate this year that his first executive order as president would be to reverse President George W. Bush on “the Mexico City policy on the gag rule so that we take a responsible position globally on family planning.”
In an attempt to deflect criticism regarding his worthiness to receive the Holy Eucharist because of his abortion record, Kerry said just last month that he personally believes life begins at conception. “I am a Catholic and have personally always believed life begins at conception, but I have never believed that that is something that should be translated as a matter of faith, an article of faith, into everybody else’s behavior for those who don’t share that faith.”
Abortion can not be solely viewed through the lens of religion, rather it cuts to the core of who we are and how we conduct ourselves as human beings, says Doherty. “It is the human rights issue,” he adds and points out that the Church’s social teaching is predicated “on the notion that we are created in the image and likeness of God and as such every human being possesses a unique dignity and is therefore worthy of protection.”
“Abortion is just as much an enemy to human rights as Nazism, Communism, and Islamic terrorism. You must have a human being to have human rights,” Doherty explains.
Massachusetts State Representative Brian Golden, a pro-life Catholic Democrat, echoes these sentiments and says, “Issues like affordable housing and universal healthcare in the end are completely meaningless to the individual if their life is taken in the womb.” Golden endorsed President Bush in the 2000 election in part because of Bush’s pro-life position versus Vice President Al Gore’s pro-abortion stance.
There was some glimmer of hope in Boston this week for traditional Democrats like Doherty and Golden, who vividly remember former Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey being shut out of the 1992 Democratic Convention because of his pro-life views. On Monday, the Democrats for Life of America (DFLA) held a dinner at the State House that included Golden, Massachusetts Speaker of the House Thomas M. Finneran, former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn, and the late Governor Casey’s son, Bob, who is Auditor General of Pennsylvania. DFLA also held a rally for life the next day at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall.
Concludes Doherty, “I am a Magisterium Catholic and as such I will vote the way she advises me. This means supporting candidates who promote and protect human rights, especially the rights of the unborn.” For Doherty and other like-minded Catholic Democrats, when it comes to presidential politics, the choice could not be clearer in 2004, as the Party they remember becomes more and more of a distant memory.
St. Thomas More, pray for us.
