Charlotte, N.C. -- The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right." So reads the 2012 Democratic National Committee platform.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi likes to attack the "the extremism of the Republicans." But in that plank, the Democrats have shown themselves to be out of touch with not only the American people - 72 percent of whom oppose public funding to pay for abortions, according to a Quinnipiac poll - but also with Democratic voters themselves.
A 2011 Gallup poll found that a minority of Democrats - 38 percent - believe that abortion should be legal under any and all circumstances. That puts the majority of Democrats on the wrong side of what the administration likes to call "the war on women."
Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life, doesn't get why her party continues to marginalize her point of view. "This is what the Democratic Party historically has fought for - the vulnerable, the needy and the unborn," she told me.
Politically, it doesn't make sense. The party needs antiabortion Democrats to leverage a majority of the House.
A member of a group of House Democratic women who took the stage at the Time Warner Cable Arena here, Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, faulted Republicans for excluding Georgetown Law School student and activist Sandra Fluke during a House hearing on birth control. A second panel included women, but why let that get in the way of a good talking point?
"Where are the women?" Maloney demanded.
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