Democratic platform goes radical on abortion

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

Last week at their national convention, Democrats adopted a radical, pro-abortion stance by making repeal of the Hyde Amendment part of their party platform.

The Hyde Amendment has been a part of federal law since 1976, when Congress decided in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade not to allow federal funding for abortion. It protects the right of those who disagree with abortion not to have their tax dollars spent on it. But Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton made clear in June she would not stand up for that right.

“Let’s repeal laws like the Hyde Amendment that make it nearly impossible … for low-income women, disproportionately women of color, to exercise their full reproductive rights,” Clinton said in a June 10 speech at Planned Parenthood.

Repeal of the Hyde Amendment is such an extreme pro-abortion measure, Stonestreet said, it could have a profound effect on the culture of life in the United States.

“They’re standing on the side of what are some of the most radical abortion ideas on the planet,” Stonestreet said of Democrats. At the same time, the left’s growing extremism on abortion could indicate something else.

“Historically that when a movement is in real trouble, the proponents of that movement get crazier and crazier,” Stonestreet said. “In the final days of Jim Crowe and slavery, there were these kind of loud, crazy positions taken by those who were ‘on the wrong side of history’ on those issues, and part of me wonders if that’s what’s happening here, as well.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Aug. 5, 2016, episode of The World and Everything in It.