Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Sets Out an Objective Analysis of the Democratic Convention – But Gets One Thing Horribly Wrong

Democrats are Not Pro-Abortion – They are Pro-Abortion Rights – There is a Difference

This Forum has always felt that Wall Street Journal Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan was the brightest of the writers on the Conservative side, and no Ms. Noon we don’t mean that as faint praise even though it sounds like it.  Ms. Noonan reviewed the first night of the Democratic Convention and generally got things right.  She criticized where criticism was appropriate

The speakers were uniformly interesting, some absolutely first-rate and some—that would be you, Ted Strickland—sourly mean-spirited and ad hominem. But that was interesting too. It told you, again, how the Dems will spend the next eight weeks going at the Reps.

She identified the slickness where there was slickness

Too smooth? Yes. But there’s a lot of too smooth on the other side, too. It’s the thing that marks the rising generation of political stars 30 to 50, they’re all too smooth. Remember when you were learning “Now I know my ABC’s . . .”? They learned it too, but on a teleprompter.

And she had unreserved praise for Michele Obama even when Ms. Obama was the partisan in opposition to Ms. Noonan’s politics.

The second half of the speech was more political and partisan and might have been the point at which you started daydreaming. I continued listening because I am interested in how she thinks, and how she sees what is at issue. She did not seem at all apologetic as she spoke of her husband’s leadership. She seemed proud, and protective.

Near the end, as she spoke of her daughters, her eyes seemed to fill with tears.

But Ms. Noonan is dead wrong in one part.

The Democratic Party is the party of abortion; it supports the widest possible interpretation of choice, and is heavily funded, literally, by the abortion industry. Abortion involves the killing of children. Sometimes Democrats speak of it, publicly, in such a way that it sounds like a small thing, a tooth extraction; sometimes they speak of it in a way that suggests it is a holy right, a high value, a good thing. Because of this, there’s a shadow of weirdness over their party, and it’s been there for at least a quarter century. When Kathleen Sibelius walked out to speak I did not think, “There’s the HHS Secretary,” I literally thought, “There’s abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sibelius, who decided to make the Catholic church bow to her need to spread abortion-inducing drugs.”

No, the Democratic Party is not the Party of abortion, it is the Party of abortion rights.  There is a huge difference, the difference between advocating something and advocating for individuals to have the right to do something.  It is indeed remarkable that Conservatives who so strongly state that they want government out of people’s lives are the strongest advocates of having government force themselves into people’s lives.

And as for the argument that the "abortion industry" funds the Democratic party, this is just pure fantasy.  There is no abortion industry, abortions are carried out and supported by men and women who believe that the ultimate choice, the extremely difficult choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term is a decision to be made by the private citizen, not the state.  

It is unfortunate that Ms. Noonan does not understand that the attack on women’s rights is an attack on Ms. Noonan’s rights and one fervently hopes that Ms. Noonan never has to endure an attack that would affect her personally. But if she does, if Republican victories result in restricting the rights of women in general and a right (other than abortion) that Ms. Noonan would like to exercise as a woman then it would only be just irony.  Let’s hope it never comes to that.