{"id":158719,"date":"2016-12-21T15:06:53","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T20:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=158719"},"modified":"2016-12-21T13:33:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T18:33:30","slug":"abortion-advocate-democrats-reject-pro-lifers-keep-extreme-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/abortion-advocate-democrats-reject-pro-lifers-keep-extreme-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion advocate wants Democrats to reject pro-lifers, keep extreme platform"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The election post-mortem for the Democratic party is ongoing, with some claiming the\u00a0party has effectively abandoned large groups of Americans at their own peril\u00a0—\u00a0pro-lifers among them. But others are vehemently rejecting this notion.<\/p>\n

Erin Matson is an abortion activist who has served on the board of directors for the National Organization for Women, former vice president of NOW Action, former editor-at-large of RH Reality Check (now Rewire), and founder of abortion advocacy group Reproaction. She noticed the calls for Democrats to be more accepting of pro-lifers, and to have more of a “big tent” approach moving forward. And she is not happy about it<\/a>, insisting that the party’s pro-abortion extremism didn’t cost the party the election, and should be upheld.<\/p>\n

A strong, proactive stance toward bodily autonomy embraced by the Democratic Party did not lose at the ballot box this presidential election. In fact, this progress is something to celebrate and continue. The party\u2019s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, embraced repealing the discriminatory Hyde Amendment that bans most abortion funding at home, a move that came only because of decades of bold activism led by reproductive justice advocates. She did the same for the Helms Amendment, which has effectively barred abortion funding abroad, and issued a strong, affirmative statement about abortion rights when finally asked a question about the topic at a presidential debate. What\u2019s more, in 2016, the Democratic Party platform explicitly committed for the first time to repealing the Hyde Amendment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s just one problem with that, though: most Americans don’t agree with this. Americans don’t<\/em> want taxpayer funding of abortion, by an overwhelming margin<\/a>. Repealing the Hyde Amendment might make Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry happy, but your average American voter doesn’t support it. This is something that multiple<\/em> polls have found… but evidently, pro-abortion extremists like Matson don’t care.<\/p>\n

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