Enclosed is the pitch Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania made to the Democratic Committee platform hearings in May. Of course, we all know how successful his pitch ultimately was ;-). He was the only pro-life speaker at the hearings, and his call was rejected by the Committee out of hand.

Afterwards, in separate press conferences, Ron Brown stated that the Democratic Party has "no litmus tests" and Nancy Peloci actually stated that the Democratic Party does *not* favor abortion-on-demand. Casey, when told this, scratched his head, said this was news to him, and asked exactly what restrictions to abortion the Democratic party prefers. Nobody there knew.

"[Abortion is] the ultimate exploitation of women." - Alice Paul

I bring greetings from Pennsylvania. The Democratic state. The state which, in 1991, fired the shot heard round the world by electing to the United States Senate underdog Democrat Harris Wofford over Bush surrogate Dick Thornburgh. And, we hope, put Mr. Bush on that slippery slope which will lead to his retirement in 1992.

Pennsylvania. A Democratic governor elected in 1986 and re-elected in 1990 by over one million votes. Democratic Senator Wofford elected in a landslide in 1991. A state House of Representatives with the largest Democratic majority in over 15 years. Democratic mayors in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Harrisburg, Altoona and Johnstown.

Pennsylvania. The Keystone State. A state our party's nominee must win if we are to recapture the White House.

Pennsylvania. A state that has voted for the Republican candidate for president in 1972, 1980, 1984 and 1988.

I come to talk about what I believe we must do if we are to defeat George Bush. I come to emphasize our common conviction, that our country is in deep trouble and the election of a Democratic president in 1992 is essential to the future of our country: a president committed to economic opportunity and social justice for all, the restoration of our communities and the protection of the environment, responsibility in our people and responsibility in our national government.

I also come as an advocate of change. To urge my party to reexamine its position on abortion in the context of the Democratic party's historic and noble mission of protecting the powerless.

I come to urge my party to be open to debate and discussion; to move away from a lock-step litmus test which advocates abortion on demand in an effort to reach a broader national consensus.

Let me first summarize my position and then elaborate.

The national Democratic Party has embraced abortion on demand. I believe this position is wrong in principle and out of the mainstream of our party's historic commitment to protecting the powerless.

And I also believe this position is politically self-defeating, because it excludes not only pro-life voters, but also those who are ambivalent, but believe the number of abortions should be reduced and the practice made subject to reasonable regulation.

A 1990 Gallup poll found that 77 percent of Americans polled said abortion was the taking of human life. I agree, and believe that taking the life on an innocent child is unjust. Abortion is the ultimate violence. Abortion on demand has, in my judgment, contributed significantly to an environment in our country in which life has become very cheap.

Listen to the power and the passion of these words:

"What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person, and what kind of a society, will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually?"

These are not the words of Jesse Helms. They are the words of Jesse Jackson, spoken in 1977, four years after Roe v. Wade.

Since 1973, over 25 million abortions have taken place in the United States; about 1.6 million abortions are performed each year. The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that 40 percent of abortions are repeat abortions, and eight percent, or about 128000 abortions each year, occur in the fourth, fifth, or sixth month of pregnancy.

I ask you to consider what I believe our response as a party should be to all of this.

Our party has always been the voice of the powerless and the voiceless. They have been our natural constituency. Let us add to this list the most powerless and voiceless member of the human family: the unborn child.

And I will go further and urge that, in fighting for life, we have a corresponding obligation to do all that we can to make life worth living for both mother and child. The right to life must mean the right to a decent life.

Our respect for the wonders of pregnancy must be matched by our sensitivity to the traumas of pregnancy. When a woman is faced with a crisis pregnancy, we must reach out to her with compassion and understanding. We must give her the support she needs to get through her pregnancy with dignity and security.

Many organizations provide such services now. More are needed. And family planning counseling, medical and other supportive services must be made available before and after pregnancy. We are setting up such programs in Pennsylvania, along with new emphasis on adoption at the county and state level.

And our concern and support must continue once a child is born. We have an obligation to protect and promote the health and well-being of *all* our children and their mothers.

We must make children and families a national priority. We must invest in our families at the national level the same way many states, including Pennsylvania, are doing right now.

This means giving our children the foundation they need to grow up healthy, strong and well-educated. It's what Marian Wright Edelman and the Children's Defense Fund call "a Head Start, a Healthy Start and a Fair Start."

We must rededicate ourselves to the things on which we all agree: comprehensive health care for mother and child, nutrition programs, family and medical leave, early intervention services for developmentally delayed children, Head Start, child care, and communities that are nurturing, safe and drug-free.

In short, our response as a party should be to work to solve the crises that produce crisis pregnancies, and work to make life worth living for mother and child, rather than victimize the child as a way of dealing with the crisis. I am convinced that this approach, a mainstream Democratic approach, commands the strong support of the American people, and presents a sharp and compassionate contrast to the Republican abortion position which offers no real hope or commitment to mother or child.

In Pennsylvania, we have:

• expanded prenatal and preventive health care for poor pregnant women and children up to the age of six;
• increased state funding for the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program;
• expanded nutrition counseling and food supplements for pregnant women and mothers who are breast-feeding;
• tripled funding for school breakfast programs;
• funneled millions of dollars into early intervention to cover every child who is developmentally delayed and needs these services;
• expanded school-based infant care education, counseling, academic and vocational training and child care;
• developed special homes where chemically-dependent mothers can live with their children while they receive the long-term residential treatment they need;
• expanded subsidized child care by 50% and established model on-site child care centers for state workers;
• created adult education, job training and support services for mothers on welfare to help them find good jobs; and
• made Pennsylvania the number one state in the nation in collecting child support from absentee parents.

We're fighting hard for family and medical leave legislation in Pennsylvania, and we've made it available to all state workers.

And this year, in the midst of a recession, we are devloping a children's health insurance program to provide comprehensive, affordable health care for the 107000 Pennsylvania children under the age of six who have no health insurance. This coverage includes outpatient services, doctor visits, immunizations, diagnostic tests, prescriptions, dental coverage, eye care and hospitalization.

All of this has been done in the face of years of Republican neglect and indifference at the national level.

Today, the growing economic and social pressures in our country are putting millions of women, children and families at increased risk of abuse and neglect, especially when families are denied basic support services and economic opportunity.

In response, Pennsylvania has tripled state funding for [dealing with] domestic violence and rape crisis problems. But this is a national tragedy and needs and deserves a national response.

Let me now explain why our party's abortion position has created a serious problem for us in presidential elections, and suggest some ideas for changing our party platform to deal with it.

[Note: at or near this point, Casey was interrupted by Rep. Nancy Peloci of CA, subbing for the then-embattled hearing organizer Mary Rose Oakar of OH. Peloci said something about everybody there sympathizing with Casey's religious view (Casey's Catholic), and Casey interrupted right back with the words "this not a religious issue. This is a moral issue. Let me continue, please."]

I believe the Democratic Party's abortion-on-demand position has been a major reason why the party has lost every presidential election since 1972, except for the post-Watergate election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. It is a major reason why Pennsylvania has voted Republican in each of these losing elections. [Note: Ohio has, too.]

And I am not alone in this view. In 1989, 49 Democratic members of Congress urged the party to change its course on abortion in a letter to party chairman Ron Brown, saying that they, "...along with millions of our fellow Democrats, believe the principle and practice of abortion is wrong." They also pointed out that "a good case can be made that the last three presidential elections have turned, at least in large part, on the loss of traditional Democrats who have broken with the party over so-called social issues, particularly abortion."

And they pointed to the ABC report on its exit polls of 100,000 voters nationwide on the night of the Bush-Dukakis election in 1988:

ABC said:

"Despite all the TV ads and speeches on prison furloughs and the Pledge of Allegiance, few voters cited those as key issues. The number one issue? Abortion! Cited by nearly one-third of voters interviewed by ABC News. And those who cited abortion went for Bush."

And in its December 14, 1991 cover story, Congressional Quarterly highlighted the party's problem:

"As Democrats try to solidify their stance in 1992 as the party of abortion rights, they must contend with a little-recognized irony: as many as a third of their members in the House remain anti-abortion."

And I urge you to consider the analysis by Richard Morin, director of polling for the Washington Post, that appeared in the Post's National Weekly Edition April 13 entitled "They Hear a Different Drummer." The article compares the abortion views of the marchers at the recent NOW rally in Washington, DC with views expressed in the national polls by most Americans. It points out that the views of the marchers were not representative of the country as a whole on such issues as whether abortion should be used as a means of birth control, whether abortion should be legal if the parents cannot afford another child, whether a pregnant teenager should have to notify a parent before having an abortion, and whether a married woman should have to obtain her husband's permission to have an abortion.

All of this adds up to a national problem for our party in presidential elections. Our party ignores these data at its peril.

What should be done?

My strong personal view, which I believe is shared by millions of Americans, is that our party should make a strong statement in its platform that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which should be protected. I urge you to place such language in our party platform this year.

I also recognize that may of my fellow Americans hold strongly to a pro-choice view. Indeed, an entire generation of Americans has grown to adulthood since the Roe decision of 1973, which held that the right to choose an abortion was a privacy right protected by our Constitution. While I strongly disagree with the Roe decision, it has been, and remains to this day (as modified by later cases, especially Webster) the law of the land. Thus, strong opposing views are not only understandable, but inevitable, in light of this history.

But diversity of opinion is no reason for the party to reject change out of hand. Indeed, when you add pro-life voters to those who are ambivalent, an abortion-on-demand position which pushes them all into the Republican camp is political suicide. Viewed in these terms, we have no choice but to change.

If our country is to reach a workable solution to the abortion issue, the Democratic party must be open to and tolerant of opposing views. And we must do what we can to work in the direction of establishing a broader national consensus. In that spirit, therefore, I urge the party to consider an alternative - both to the abortion-on-demand view and the view of millions of Americans like me who believe the platform should affirm the fundamental right to life of the unborn child - which would give us a party platform that reflects the views of a majority of Democrats and a majority of Americans.

I speak of platform language which would replace the 1988 language with a statement of commitment to the principle that, as a minimum, abortion ought to be subject to reasonable regulation; such as:

• An abortion should not be permitted after 24 weeks of pregnancy, except where the mother is in a life-threatening situation;
• A woman should tell her husband if she is considering an abortion, with exceptions to protect her.
• A teenage daughter considering an abortion should obtain the consent of at least one parent, with exceptions to protect her.
• A doctor should give a woman the facts about abortion, just as in any other medical procedure, so she can give informed consent to the procedure.
• After the woman receives medical information on the abortion procedure, she should have 24 hours to consider the information before going through [with the procedure].
• An abortion should not be permitted for the sole reason that the mother is dissatisfied with the sex of her unborn child.

These provisions have been tested repeatedly in national public opinion polls and are supported overwhelmingly by 70-80% of the American people. In other words, these restrictions are not just the right thing to do, they coincide with the views of the vast majority of Americans. To reject reasonable restrictions like these puts our party far out of the mainstream and on the extreme fringe of the most important value issue of our time.

I believe the American people support these provisions because they attempt to balance the rights of the mother, child, husband and, in the case of a minor daughter, her parents.

By rejecting abortion-on-demand, we can move our party back to the mainstream. We can reclaim those Democrats whose opposition to abortion-on-demand has led them to vote Republican in national elections, only to have their pockets picked after the election by the failed economic and fiscal policies of the Reagan-Bush years. And we can attract to our party those millions of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, who, while ambivalent on abortion, believe that the number of abortions should be reduced and the practice made subject to reasonable regulation.

We have an excellent opportunity this year to have our platform reflect a viewpoint on the abortion issue which can move us toward consensus and help elect a Democratic president in 1992. I believe the course I have outlined would achieve both goals.

Back to Essays