The abortion absolutists: Abortionist Warren Hern and his Democratic Party
Timothy P. Carney
Video Embed
There are people who are pro-choice, and then there are people who are almost religiously devoted to abortion. Abortionist Warren Hern is a devotee.
Hern hates Christianity and dislikes the Hebrew Bible as well, but if you read the latest profile of him in the Atlantic, it’s clear he’s almost a religious zealot.
UP FOR DEBATE: WHERE TRUMP, DESANTIS, AND REST OF REPUBLICAN 2024 FIELD STAND ON KEY ISSUES
“He takes the woman’s-choice argument to its logical conclusion, in much the same way that, at this moment, anti-abortion activists are pressing their case to its extreme,” writes Atlantic staff writer Elaine Godfrey. “Hern considers his religious adversaries to be zealots, and many of them are. But he is, in his own way, no less an absolutist.”
If you listen closely to the words and arguments of Hern, and if you follow his career and notice his friends, you realize something: Where Hern, the abortion absolutist, stands is exactly where the Democratic Party of 2023 stands.
The leaders of the Democratic Party, like Hern, will never grant that the unborn should ever get any legal protection. They take the “freedom to choose” logic to its extreme: If a woman wants an abortion for any reason and at any stage of gestation, it must be allowed by law.
Here’s the Atlantic’s description of Hern’s position:
“Many of the women who visit Hern’s clinic do so because their health is at risk—or because their fetus has a serious abnormality that would require a baby to undergo countless surgeries with little chance of survival. But Hern does not restrict his work to these cases. Hern is reluctant to acknowledge any limit, any red line.”
That might sound familiar if you’ve closely followed the occasional difficult questions pro-choice Democrats receive about abortion. “Reluctant to acknowledge any limit, any red line” is literally what Democratic leaders are.
They get plenty of cover from most of the news media, but occasionally, Democratic lawmakers are asked if there is any single restriction on abortion they would tolerate — parental notification, banning third-trimester abortions of healthy babies, banning partial-birth abortion, banning sex-selective abortions — and every single time they are asked, prominent Democrats refuse to grant any ground to the unborn.
Hillary Clinton as the standard bearer in 2016 laid down the marker that her party stood for “abortion without caveats,” as her champions put it.
Recently, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) was representing Senate Democrats on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream, and he made it clear that his party, like abortionist Hern, opposed any restriction on abortion.
Here’s the transcript:
BREAM: What is the Democrats’ position? Where do you draw the line?
CARDIN: We support Roe v. Wade, we support the right of women to be able to make their own decisions about their reproductive rights, and it shouldn’t be subservient to what state legislatures are doing.
BREAM: But what about the states where it’s actually legal up until the due date? Is that something Democrats support?
CARDIN: We support the right of women to make their own decisions. This is a personal decision made by women with the advice of their doctors and their family, and we don’t think we should try to tell women when they can make those decisions.
BREAM: Is there a cutoff for you before that point?
CARDIN: No, to me, it’s a reproductive — it’s a healthcare decision. It’s up to women to make that decision.
It isn’t just Cardin. Every time a prominent Democrat gets this question, he or she refuses to state any case in which he or she would protect the unborn baby.
That is, the Democrats believe that abortion should be legal up until the moment of birth. That’s the abortion absolutist position held by late-term abortionist Hern.