How the Pro-Life Democrat Went Extinct

Following action earlier this year by the House, the Senate recently voted on the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would go far beyond Roe v. Wade by codifying into federal law the most extreme pro-abortion measures. Twelve out of 23 Catholics in the Senate voted for the bill, all of whom are Democrats. Seventy-six out of 134 Catholics in the House voted for it, all of whom, again, are Democrats.

It’s ironic that the Democratic Party, which is ostensibly built around the defense of the weak and the marginalized, is so fervidly committed to the right to kill the most vulnerable. Roughly one-third of Democrats in Congress today identify as Catholic, while simultaneously advocating abortion. Apparently cultural ties to the Catholic Church are more robust than doctrinal ties. Or, more likely, these elected representatives are more devoted to their party platform than to their faith. (To be fair, this also is true of some Republicans.)

How did it get this bad? In 1964 Sen.

Ted Kennedy

convened a group of prominent priests at his Hyannis Port, Mass., compound to discuss abortion policy. The meeting largely initiated the Democratic Party’s embrace of abortion.

Having spent more than a decade representing American Catholic bishops on Capitol Hill, I can attest to how dramatic the transformation of Democratic politicians from pro-life to pro-abortion was. In 2009, 64 Democrats in the House voted for the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the Affordable Care Act, which would have prohibited any federal funds flowing through the bill from being used to underwrite abortion. The amendment didn’t survive, but the 64 Democratic votes were a sign of bipartisan strength for the pro-life cause.

All but one of those Democrats has either left Congress or come to embrace abortion. There are now countless examples beyond Congress of prominent politicians who are Catholic speaking out of both sides of their mouths, including President Biden and former Govs.

Mario Cuomo

and Arnold Schwarzenegger (the latter a Republican). Perhaps most tragic is that these elected officials offer uncompromising support of abortion yet face little resistance from the church. This is a scandal for the faithful, a pastoral failure to the politicians themselves, and a catastrophe for the unborn and women who are victims of the abortion industry.

What is particularly maddening is that this is the result of a 50-year trajectory that was there for everyone, including the bishops, to see. Kennedy started the trend, but the outcome wasn’t inevitable. What if bishops had recognized that politicians who supported abortion had removed themselves from the Catholic community and responded accordingly? What if bishops or religious superiors had ousted priests who excused abortion advocates? It is not hard to imagine that bishops taking a harder line with pro-abortion politicians would have stemmed the conversion of the Democratic Party to a cult of death.

The church leadership’s failure over the past 50 years has been fatal. Some misapplied Cardinal

Joseph Bernardin’s

“consistent ethic of life,” mistakenly seeing the principle as a so-called seamless-garment approach that raised social justice and other pro-life issues to the same importance as ending abortion. Others, such as the disgraced former Cardinal

Theodore McCarrick,

called for a gentle approach to garner support for other issues.

Ultimately the Democratic Party, once a natural home for millions of Catholics, has become unwaveringly hostile to the Catholic citizen. Yet pro-abortion Catholic Democrats act as if they are in good standing with the church, and that is somewhat understandable because there has been no ecclesial consequence to their support for abortion, the pre-eminent social issue of this era.

Should the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision hold, the battle for pro-life legislation will move to the states. Let us pray that this will be the moment when the church revisits its pastoral and civil approach to abortion, recognizing not only that Catholics who persistently advocate for abortion are no longer in communion with the church, but that they should be treated accordingly.

Mr. Henricks was executive director of government relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (2011-17).