Last year, Governor DeSantis claimed that the left is attempting to “override pro-life protections” and essentially allow abortion all the way to birth.  NBC Reporter Dasha Burns shot back that there is no indication that Democrats are attempting to do this.

Who is right?

While some Democrats, including former Governor Ralph Northum and Delegate Kathy Tran (D-VA), have slipped up and revealed their policy, other Democrats have been more cautious with their words, hiding the truth of the real agenda. Mainstream media, as evidenced by Burns’s response, attempts to obfuscate the truth by pivoting to an unrelated fact like the rarity of late-term abortions. 

Yes, late-term abortions are fortunately rare, as Burns pointed out. Still, it has little to do with the other important fact: the Democratic establishment is pushing for de-regulating abortion throughout pregnancy, which means allowing abortion up to birth.

What evidence do we have?  Let’s start with the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), cosponsored by almost every Senate and House Democrat. This federal legislation would allow abortion throughout pregnancy nationwide and overturn state laws to regulate or limit abortion.

While some have claimed that the WHPA codifies Roe v. Wade, the WHPA goes far beyond the Roe framework. Unlike Roe, it does not differentiate between trimesters nor uphold common sense health and safety regulations around abortion. Unlike Roe, it does not address the balance between the “government’s interest in protecting women’s health” and protecting “the potentiality of human life.” Instead of restoring Roe, the so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act” creates “a statutory right” to “abortion services.” 

Regulations that guarantee that women receive the full range of options and continuous care from an informed provider are just some of the commonsense health and safety regulations that protected women under Roe that would be lost under the WHPA.The WHPA will make abortion less safe for women as it allows providers to chase profits.

Further, Democratic-run states, including Michigan, Maryland, New York, and California, have tried or been successful in eliminating pregnancy support funding. The Arizona Governor this year eliminated a program aimed to support pregnant homeless women, and just recently, the Pennsylvania Governor cut funding for the Real Alternatives program that was put in place by Democratic Governor Bob Casey.

Illinois is trying to shut down pregnancy support centers by making it easier to sue the clinics if someone deems the information “inaccurate.” Abortion clinics would not face the same scrutiny and can continue to tell women that a baby in the womb is not a baby but just a clump of cells or a heartbeat is simply “cardiac activity.”

Lastly, the big push to make abortion a Constitutional right throughout pregnancy has been a significant priority – most recently passing in Michigan.

None of these efforts will help women facing unplanned or even planned pregnancies, and we have already seen increases in abortion numbers. Cutting support and deregulating abortion make abortion not a choice but the only option for financially insecure women. 

The deregulation and Constitutional abortion provisions also increase late-term abortions. Removing reasonable limitations to abortion will increase abortions later in pregnancy. According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 930,000 abortions performed in the United States in 2020. The CDC notes that 1% of abortions occur after 21 weeks of gestation. So, even though the percentage is small, that is still 9,300 abortions performed after nominal viability. These later-term abortions also increase the dangers to women’s lives and health.

We should be moving in a different direction. 

Yet, this is what the Democratic establishment is advocating because they see it as a winning campaign issue. While you may question Governor DeSantis’s claim that the Democratic Party is “pushing” late-term abortion, the facts say he is not totally wrong.  The old aphorism “actions speak louder than words” applies…and sometimes inaction is louder than both.