All aboard

Fall in line, or else

AMONG all the ads and commercials and mailed push-cards this season, one stood out. Mainly because it appeared in our paper, full color no less. It published Sunday in your Democrat-Gazette, and we’d refer you to it. For our iPad users, it’s but a click away.

The advertisement was paid for by the ACLU, and for all the ribbing that conservatives give it, that outfit serves an important purpose in today’s America. When speech is so offensive that few people will stick up for it, there will be the ACLU doing the best good for the worst people.

There’s a reason this organization combines “civil liberties” and “American” in its name. Few countries could have an ACLU running around. Which says a lot about this country—a lot of good.

The point of the ad, we suppose, is to point out that Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg had yet to take “clear positions on the civil liberties and civil rights questions posed by the ACLU.” Whereas the other candidates had. And their answers were listed. Did they support cutting federal incarceration by half? Did they promise to decriminalize drug use? Round up the usual suspected questions.

One thing caught our eye. Like a cinder. The candidates could disagree, and did, on many topics posed by the ACLU. They could disagree on whether the CIA should use drone strikes, or whether felons in prison should be allowed to vote. They could disagree on whether to reduce immigrants in detention, or whether to focus on drug treatment over drug laws.

But they couldn’t, and didn’t, disagree on abortion.

Asked whether they would “prevent states from shutting down abortion providers,” every candidate for president among the Democratic would-be nominees said yes.

There are a couple of things to unpack here, including whether the federal executive should be able to keep a state from shutting down an abortion clinic—“clinic” being another euphemism that has been adopted by everybody in this debate. Just as abortion on demand is now called Choice, these bloody places where abortions are conducted have taken the name of a place where people are healed.

Once upon a time, a Democrat could have been against abortion on demand. No longer. Or perhaps it’s only Democratic candidates for president.

You might could find a pro-Life Democrat here and there. But they’re rare as hens’ teeth. In 2012, at the nominating convention in Charlotte, the national party changed the wording of its abortion plank.

Instead of the old Clinton phrase “safe, legal and rare,” the party took out the word “rare.” When Tulsi Gabbard made the mistake of using the word in a presidential debate, she was accosted on Twitter by a pro-abortion outfit in Ohio: “This is a position—making abortion ‘rare’—not supported by prochoice advocates.” Pete Buttigieg’s worst performance of the season was when he wouldn’t answer a question about abortion from a voter in Iowa.

There’s a group called Shout Your Abortion. We’re not kidding.

Is it any wonder that a young lady was recorded giggling on her way to an abortion clinic in Pasadena, Calif., recently? You might not find the story in most American media outlets, but the British papers are all over it. This teen shows off an apparent baby bump and pregnancy test on a TikTok video, and she and her friends dance their way into the abortion clinic—there’s that word again—for some more fun and games, including a zoom-in of the ultrasound. As much teasing and giggling that goes on in the brief video, they could have been shopping for shoes. Make it fun! And yet.

And yet those who oppose abortion on demand, or at least think these 50 laboratories of democracy should be able to restrict the practice as voters see fit, are called extremists. Even though an entire political party in this country has adopted the policy that all its candidates for high office must follow: Abortion should be safe and legal. Period.

The message is clear: Fall in line. Emphasis on fall.