Rolling Stone: What's Missing From the Debate About Pro-Life Democrats

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Since we're apparently doomed to repeat 2016 until the heat death of the universe, Democrats are fighting again about Bernie Sanders and women's rights. Sanders, along with Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez, took some heat last week for making a stop on the DNC's "unity tour" to support Heath Mello – the Democratic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, who turns out to have either sponsored or voted for a long list of anti-abortion bills during his time in the state legislature.

Mello is within striking distance of unseating the Republican incumbent mayor of Omaha, so he may have seemed to the DNC like a good poster boy for how Democrats can reclaim political power in red states. But in light of his voting record, many advocates argued that Democrats were treating women's basic reproductive freedom as an acceptable bargaining chip to try to win elections in Republican-leaning areas. Again.

They wondered why it was OK for Sanders, that self-styled champion of progressivism, to shrug off Mello's abortion record by saying, "I am 100 percent pro-choice, but not every candidate out there has my views 100 percent of the time" – while blasting Georgia Democratic congressional candidate Jon Ossoff as "not progressive" because he didn't use the words "income inequality" on his website.

They wondered when Democrats, beyond Sanders, will live up to their own 2016 platform – which, by calling for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment and the restoration of federal funding for abortion, implicitly recognized abortion as an economic justice issue for poor women in particular. They wondered if Democrats will ever stop automatically treating reproductive freedom like a mere "social issue," and start recognizing it as critical to women's economic and social equality.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/whats-missing-from-the-debate-about-pro-life-democrats-w478484?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=042417_15

[Squinch]

1. And this part:

And right now, given the constant barrage of hostile state lawmaking and court battles, active defense is the minimum requirement to protect reproductive rights in America.