I am not saying being a Pro-Life Democrat isn't hard or rare. Bob Casey Sr. Gave a good speech on being a Pro-Life Democrat and how it is incompatible with the heart of what the party is. I often quote it in conversation with friends who want to find something different in their party because Abortion does not sit well with them. And, there are many young people who feel that way. Sadly congress had a powerful Pro-Life Democrat representation for the first time right before the Tea Party congressional landslide. The Tea Party took many seats from Pro-Life and Blue Dog Democrats. It really weakened them as a political force. But as far as the speech...Here are some excerpts. I find it resonates with young Democrats:
given by Bob Casey Sr. At Notre Dame in 1995.
I put it here rather than the political subforum because it is in Archbishop chaputs book and is a very Catholic speech:
We must ask ourselves, "Where today does conscience call us?" What is the deepest source of the unease that's documented in survey after survey across this country. It is deep, and it's basic, and it's powerful. I believe that a great majority of people in America know the answer to that question. The silent figure at the center of our great cultural debate is the unborn child. For a generation now - over twenty years - we've lived with abortion on demand. It was sold to America, this idea, as a kind of a social cure, a resolution. Instead, it has left us wounded and divided. We were promised it would broaden the circle of freedom. Instead, it has narrowed the circle of humanity. We were told the whole matter was settled and would soon pass from our minds. Twenty years later, it tears at our souls. And so, it is for me the bitterest of ironies that abortion on demand found refuge .. found a home - and it pains me to say this - found a home in the National Democratic Party. My party, the party of the weak, the party of the powerless.
You see, to me, protecting the unborn child follows naturally from everything I know about my party and about my country. Nothing could be more foreign to the American experience than legalized abortion. It is inconsistent with our national character, with our national purpose, with all that we've done, and with everything we hope to be.
You know, for eight years, I served as governor of Pennsylvania. All the problems that America confronts today, health care, the level of taxation, education, economic growth, crime, welfare, the environment - you name it, a state like Pennsylvania - we see it all. All these things are important, they're very important. They concern the day to day business of government. They were my life for eight years. But, in the end, they are relative problems. And they demand relative solutions. They are about how we shall live as a people in America. Of course the economy is or urgent concern to everyone, and properly so - the issue of how we make our livelihood, how we pay our bills, how we invest for our future. But the need to protect the unborn child is just as urgent as the economic concerns that confront our country.
In the case of the unborn child we're dealing not just with our livelihoods, but with lives... not just how comfortably we will live, but how comfortably we will live with our consciences. Think about it, why do all parties to this debate routinely call abortion a "social issue"? Because deep down we know that the fate of one life touches us all. In a way, all the talk about values misses the point. Because we are talking about a thing of infinite value. Human life cannot be measured. It is the measure itself. The value of everything else is weighed against it. The abortion debate is not about how we shall live, but who shall live. And more than that, it's about who we are.
The fundamental question posed is this: once a child has been conceived, what is the proper response of a good society - of America at her best? If pregnancy presents a challenge, do we as a society rise to the challenge by dispensing with the child? And when a pregnancy comes at a difficult time, what is the worthier response? Do we surround mother and child with protection and love, or do we hold out to her the cold comfort of a trip to an abortionist? Where is our true character as a nation to be seen - let's ask ourselves this question: Where is our true character to be seen, in an adoptive home, or in an abortion clinic? Who are we? Who are we America? That question deserves an answer. And what woman is truly empowered, I ask you, the woman who takes life, or the woman who gives life?
You know, I've asked this question before, but I must ask it again. Since when does America, the strongest, the most powerful country in the world, abandon in despair an entire class of people - the most defenseless, innocent, and vulnerable members of the human family? How can we justify with our experience in this country - our tradition, our heritage, our history - how can we justify writing off the unborn child in a country which prides itself on leaving no one out and no one behind?
You see, I believe the American people know the answer to these questions. They know that abortion is not worthy of a great nation. It's like few other issues we've ever faced, when you think about it. Other causes demand commitment, abortion demands complicity. Other causes survive by energy and attention. The survival of the abortion industry - and it an industry - depends upon avoidance and silence. Look at our history.
All the great causes have marched under proud banners and declaratory words that summon people to action. But this cause goes under eerie, elusive euphemisms; like "choice". They talk about the "procedure" and they talk about "termination". Antiseptic words. Words stripped of their humanity. Politically correct words that are, oh so careful not to be offensive. Other ages faced the tragedy of abortion, but at least they recognized it as a tragedy. Ours alone - and think about this - ours alone has dared to call it a "social good". Ours alone has dared to call the victim a "thing", the act a "service", the perpetrator a "provider". Ours alone has made abortion not only a right, but a lucrative industry. And what decent society can live with that?
But you know something, the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction, in the direction of protection of life. The Freedom of Choice Act, that grand design that was to pass through the Congress with no problem, has failed. More than eighty-three percent of the counties, twenty-one years later, more than eighty-three percent of the counties in the United States have no abortion clinics, because people don't want them there.
Fewer and fewer medical schools are teaching abortion. Most doctors themselves want nothing to do with it. At the U.S. military bases overseas every military doctor in Europe and Asia, to a person, refused to participate in abortions. The signs are unmistakable, and they are signs, I think, that point to a very hopeful future. As far as the future is concerned, what do we do? We put our best hope, as we always have in America when faced by challenges of this kind, in the basic goodness and the basic common sense of the American people. No fine gloss on the issue, no hedging, no slick finesse, can shake America's consensus of the heart. A consensus that grows every time someone looks in a sonogram.
You know, when you think about it, you can't stifle this debate with a piece of paper. No edict, no federal mandate will put to rest the grave doubts of the American people. Legal abortion will never rest easy on the conscience of America. It will continue to haunt the consciences of men and women everywhere. The plain facts of biology, the profound appeals of the heart, are far to unsettling ever to fade away.
When you think about it, you know, ours is still after all, the world's only country with a birth certificate. A document of legitimacy explaining exactly what our rights and duties are, and where our laws come from. We were endowed with these rights, says that Declaration, by our Creator.
We were not only created, says the Declaration, but created equal. So our rights, therefore, are by definition, in the words of the Declaration, unalienable. All the laws protecting these rights, therefore, are not to be tampered with by man. Alexander Hamilton had a word for this process, and it's a beautiful formulation. Listen just for a moment. he said, and I quote, "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of Divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."
And he continues:
Prior to 1973 - just think about this for a minute - the laws of America reflected an overwhelming pro-life consensus that children before birth deserve the protection of the law. That consensus was a secular consensus. Those laws were not written by clerics, or in monasteries, or by the great organized religions of America. They were written by people who respected the truth. And that secular, pro-life consensus was both popular and national. And those two words are important. Popular because it came directly from the people, and national because it was not sectional or regional. It covered the entire country .. not unique to any one class or any region, but embodied in the laws of virtually every state in our nation. Not unique to our left or to the right, Democrats or Republicans, Liberals or conservatives, it represented the mainstream of America. My friends, it still is the mainstream of America, so don't be fooled.
The American people have not accepted abortion on demand. They've been hammering away for twenty-one years, but they're hammering a square peg into a round hole. It's like a bone in our throat. We can't swallow it. We cannot assimilate it. We cannot become comfortable with it, because it's fundamentally contrary to what we believe as Americans. It's in our history. Every poll shows a vast and growing unease with the abortion license and the industry that serves it. I believe a pro-life consensus already exists in America. And it grows every time someone looks in a sonogram.
But, you know, many of our fellow citizens do not know this. I urge you tonight to tell them. If you will do this, you will be, in the words of the mission statement of Notre Dame, dedicating yourselves to the pursuit and sharing of truth, for its own sake, with the aim of creating a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service to justice.
