It’s Time for Democrats to Welcome Pro-Life Liberals

(Hint: It’s Why I am a Registered Independent)

It’s past time, really. The number of common issues that persons of faith hold with traditional democrats, who also include persons of faith, is MANY: poverty, institutional racism, individual equality, corporate and government corruption, democracy, personal freedom, public responsibility, a place for the immigrant and refugee…the list goes on and on.

Why should a Catholic Democrat deny her conscious by joining a party with only one position on an issue of extreme importance to the Catholic Church? She does so because the other issues demand her political participation.

Why does a Republican disgusted by the vitriolic screed of her morphing party no longer have a political place to call home nor a path to her own political participation? Because the only other option is a party who ignores the prevalent American feelings on abortion.

Americans at best are ambivalent about, hold private feelings against, and are willing to consider limits to a woman’s right to choose.

I will never convince staunch feminists that I, too, am a feminist, even though I am pro-life.

I don’t need to convince feminists. I need to convince the Democratic Party.

If the Democratic Party were to open its doors to pro-life Democratic candidates, the nature of politics in the United States would immediately change.

How do I know this?

Because I have been a part of the pro-life, Conservative, Christian Republican movement my entire life, and I am tired of it. And I know others in my tribe are, too.

In the early 20th century, long before he became prime minister during England’s darkest hours, Winston Churchill switched political parties. (He would do it again.) He was disgusted by his Conservative Party’s shifting stand on immigration and trade, which the party historically had held should be free.

Sound familiar?

American political parties today have flip flopped on the meaning of freedom.

Until recently, a belief that the free movement and exchange of goods and peoples, in order for the consumer, worker, and producer alike to have the greatest opportunity for happiness, rested with Republicans. The very motto of the Republican Party was “free land, free labor, free men.”

Now, it is true that there was a general understanding within the party that “free men” actually meant “free, white men,” but Lincoln’s Republican victory in 1860 killed the chances of whatever remaining Federalists and Whigs were waiting in the wings to run for office, and Democrats were divided over slavery but for it in some form or another.

Not until the Great Depression did Democrats find a platform for success: government intervention when necessary.

That idea has been hugely important to American history and has led to many necessary reforms in the United States.

Guess what? It was also Donald Trump’s platform in 2016. Trump argued that government intervention was necessary for two things: removal of undocumented persons living in the country and increasing protectionist tariffs on American goods. Trump, other than his pro-life stand, which included the tacit understanding that he would appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court, was not a Republican.

So, back to the beginning. What happens when you realize your life-long party has abandoned you on every issue but abortion? Nothing. Because you have nowhere to go.

If the Democratic Party wasn’t so afraid of its own multifaceted and diverse constituencies, it would add another.

It would pull its own “Donald Trump” and open its doors to disaffected Republicans who happen to be pro-life.

It would welcome candidates who are pro-life and understand that the increase in party membership would allow Congressional debate over policy to actually become real debate because the wide middle of American-voter response would elect members to Congress who were willing start conversations from the middle and not from the extremes.