Washington Examiner senior political columnist Timothy Carney argued in a May 5 op-ed that effectively no pro-life Democrats remain in Washington, D.C., because support for abortion has become a non-negotiable position within the national Democratic Party.
Abortion, Carney argued, has become the “central organizing principle” of the current Democratic Party — a position he said every Democratic politician and official is expected to endorse.
The column followed Carney’s earlier report on what he called the “Democrat-Abortion axis,” in which he argued that the Biden Justice Department relied closely on pro-abortion groups while pursuing prosecutions against pro-life activists. Carney argued in his May 6 piece that the relationship between Democrats and pro-abortion groups extends far beyond law enforcement.
“Legalizing, subsidizing, and spreading abortion is a cause inextricable from the Democratic Party,” he said. “At times, the Democratic Party looks like an arm of the abortion lobby.”
Carney then pointed to several examples to support his argument that abortion has become a cornerstone of the party.
First, he called Democrats “absolutists on abortion,” arguing that one cannot find a Democratic politician who “is willing to tolerate any limits on abortion in any case.” He pointed to former Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski as the last pro-life Democrat in Congress, noting that Lipinski lost his 2020 Democratic primary.
Carney also said Democratic governors have elevated abortion lobbyists to fill Senate vacancies twice in recent years, linking to a 2023 Washington Examiner report that Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., appointed Laphonza Butler, a leader of the abortion lobby EMILY’s List, to fill a vacant Senate seat.
He then noted that abortion groups “make up a huge portion of the Democratic fundraising base,” specifically citing the political action committee (PAC) EMILY’s List, which he said has spent an average of about $70 million over the past three election cycles.
“For comparison, that’s quadruple the spending by the National Rifle Association’s PAC,” Carney said.
He also pointed to federal funding for Planned Parenthood as a core Democratic priority, recalling that former President Barack Obama treated the issue as his “one non-negotiable item” during the 2011 budget fight.
Finally, Carney said Democrats’ main reason for seeking to expand the Supreme Court is to keep abortion legal. He pointed to an October 2024 video in which then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris said people were “losing confidence in the Supreme Court,” in part because of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and said there should be “some kind of reform” in the high court.
“It’s possible to be a tax-cutting Democrat, a pro-war Democrat, an immigration-restrictionist Democrat, and these days, Democrats are allowed to oppose boys in girls’ sports,” Carney said. “But a pro-life Democrat, in Washington, would be a contradiction in terms.”