In an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Maureen Ferguson took Democratic Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey Jr. to task for his vote this past Monday in favor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, calling it “another chapter in the sad, parallel descent of [Casey] from a principled defender of the unborn to a believer in abortion as a sacred right.”
As I noted on NRO earlier this week, Casey’s vote wasn’t especially surprising — nearly every Senate Democrat who voted, other than West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, backed the pro-abortion legislation — but it was especially disappointing considering that he continues to portray himself as a pro-lifer.
Ferguson contrasts Casey Jr.’s defection on abortion with his stalwart pro-life father, Bob Casey Sr., the late two-term governor of Pennsylvania:
A generation ago, another leader stood up to the abortion industry and his own party because, to him, unborn children were one more vulnerable group who deserved Democrats’ protection. His name was Bob Casey Sr., and he became a national hero when, as Pennsylvania’s governor, he fought Planned Parenthood all the way to the Supreme Court to defend the innocent from violence. The decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey upheld Pennsylvania’s pro-life laws.
Bob Casey Jr. first ran for office as a pro-life Democrat, too, and was elected to the U.S. Senate largely on his father’s good name. That legacy is proud and noble — but it has become inconvenient at glitzy fundraisers and on Twitter. And so Mr. Casey, like his party’s leaders, has abandoned that proud, inclusive legacy and traded it in for cultural intolerance and ideological extremism. Mr. Casey is now a full-fledged member of Team Planned Parenthood.
Her op-ed offers a key insight into why Democrats insist on backing extreme legislation such as the WHPA, even though it’s unpopular even with their own voters: “Despite the actual problems facing their traditional working-class base, cultural extremism like third-trimester abortion-on-demand is what Democratic elites really care about today.”
The Women’s Health Protection Act, which would go so far as to block state pro-life laws across the country, is a case in point.