On this day two years ago, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its ruling in Dobbs. Freeing political actors who wish to protect the unborn from the shackles that Roe v. Wade (and then Planned Parenthood v. Casey) had imposed was a tremendous victory for the pro-life cause, one many decades in the making. We can and should celebrate it even while acknowledging that pro-lifers have much still to do, as two pieces on the site argue today.
One challenge that pro-lifers face today is that pro-abortion sentiment on the political left has metastasized and mainstreamed. Case in point: Bob Casey, who represents Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate. Casey, who has in the past (albeit dubiously) presented himself as a “pro-life Democrat,” has officially abandoned even the pretense thereof. In his reelection campaign this year, Casey is attacking his Republican opponent, Dave McCormick, as a threat to abortion access. Even the Associated Press admits that it is “quite a reframing for Casey,” and “something he’s never done before.”
What’s even more striking is that Casey’s father (also Bob Casey) was the “Casey” in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. As governor of Pennsylvania, he went to the Court to defend protections of the unborn that the state had enacted. Casey Sr. also sought a speaking slot at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, which the party denied him because of his pro-life views.
Casey Sr.’s denial by the DNC notwithstanding, pro-life sentiment was, until recently, not unheard of in the Democratic Party. In addition to Casey Sr., there’s Biden himself. Many decades before assuming his present (un-Catholic) pro-abortion political persona, he sounded quite different on the issue. He once supported a pro-life amendment to the U.S. Constitution, for example. But times have changed: Dan Lipinski, the last genuinely pro-life Democrat in Congress, lost a primary challenge in 2020.
Now pro-abortion radicalism is regnant in the Democratic Party. Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris became the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic. Her visit came just days after President Joe Biden condemned the Dobbs decision and called for the restoration of the abortion regime imposed by Roe v. Wade during his State of the Union address — while some of the justices were seated in front of him. And this year, Democrats are leaning into abortion as a political issue. They believe it is an electoral boon to them; with an unpopular incumbent president on the ballot, they need all the help they can get.
That Casey would follow this strategy as well makes the Left’s growing radicalism on abortion clear. As does the manner in which other Democrats have greeted his conversion. “I don’t believe he ever wanted those (pro-life) beliefs to ever stand in the way of access to abortion, and now his position matters more than it did just two years ago,” one Democratic strategist said. Genuine pro-life conviction, in this view, is a mere inconvenience, to be dropped when expedient. It is a disturbing perspective. But it is also a clarifying one. For pro-lifers to figure out the best way forward after Dobbs, it is important to know the extent and nature of the forces arrayed in opposition. Senator Casey, to his immense discredit, now counts among their number.