Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s latest statements about young women voters and Roe v. Wade highlight again that she does not understand feminism, the Democratic Party, or how to build a winning coalition.

Rep. Wasserman Schultz has led the Democratic Party to our lowest numbers since the Hoover Administration.  Since 2010, we have lost 912 state legislative seats and 30 state legislative chambers.

Her recent statements and her continuation at the helm of our party could decimate us even further.

Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, recently told the New York Times Magazine that women in the Millennial generation, those in their 20s and 30s, are not committed to fighting for abortion rights because their “entire lives have been lived after Roe v. Wade was decided.”

No kidding. Women who have grown up seeing the full effect of abortion-on-demand on their lives, who have seen abuse of women and children facilitated by the abortion industry, who have seen medical advances such as enhanced ultrasound – which gives the lie to the claim that they carry just a clump of cells – these women somehow don’t support abortion.

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*The following was published in The Hill: CongressBlog.

After yet another wave of GOP victories in the recent elections, it is time for the Democratic Party to face the fact.

We are losing.

Yet, some scoff at the idea, especially with the 2016 presidential election favoring a Democratic win. However, across the country, the Democratic message is being drowned in a red sea of Republican-controlled states.

Democrats have done well in the past two presidential races, but when it comes to the federal, state and local levels in the midterm elections, we are getting crushed.

Shockingly, we Democrats are at our lowest numbers since Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928, almost 90 years ago. Since 2010, we have lost 69 U.S. House seats, 13 U.S. Senate seats, 912 state legislative seats, 30 state legislative chambers, and 12 governorships. Republicans now hold 33 vs. 16 Democratic state house chambers, 35 vs. 14 Democratic state senate chambers, 32 vs. 18 Democratic governorships, and the majority in both the U.S. House (246 vs. 188) and the U.S. Senate (54 vs. 44).

So why is the Democratic Party having such a hard time reaching the heartland of America? The recent Kentucky gubernatorial race offers a good narrative. The Democratic candidate thought he had an easy path to the governor’s office. He was ahead in the polls against a novice Tea Party Republican who even the Republican establishment thought would lose. Yet the Republican won by standing against Planned Parenthood and gay marriage. The Democratic Governors Association blamed the loss on “Trumpmania,” but it was more about moral values, such as abortion, an issue that has left the Kentucky State House as the only legislative chamber in the South under Democratic control. A change of just five seats in the Kentucky State House could end the last vestige of Democratic control in the South.

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*** The following ran in the LA Times on October 7, 2015

What’s the calling card value of the National Rifle Assn. and other conservative organizations? Skepticism of government infringing on the autonomy and freedom of individuals, of course. But in yet another example of America’s incoherent politics, assisted suicide has been legalized in liberal California by appealing to precisely these conservative values.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the best arguments against assisted suicide — especially advanced by such liberal icons as E.J. Dionne and Victoria Kennedy — are progressive. Liberals are generally happy for government to restrict individual freedoms to prevent violence and killing. They are also generally skeptical of the idea that choice leads to genuine freedom, especially for those without power on the margins of our culture.

Indeed, liberal states such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and, until this week, California had all recently rejected such legislation. Britain’s attempt to pass an assisted-suicide bill also went down to overwhelming defeat.

To get a victory in California, its supporters were forced to bypass the regular legislative process (which defeated the bill) and instead consider the bill in a healthcare special session, and under unusual rules. This context is as telling as it is disturbing.

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***The following was printed in The Hill – Congress Blog

A few weeks ago, I was teaching a class on the legislative process to some high school students. The kids were playing the role of House and Senate members in a conference committee, and I charged them with working out the differences between their two bills. The frustrated students came to a stalemateand looked to me for answers. They inquired if this is what really happens during the legislative process. Sadly, there has been very little compromising in this Congress. The students, however, were able to do what our own Congress is not doing. They negotiated, and each legislative chamber gave up something important to them in order to reach the broader goal for the common good.

The U.S. Senate had an opportunity to put this practice to use on Tuesday, when they considered H.36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban terminations of unborn babies at 20 weeks and later.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York wrote on his blog, “The late-term ban is a particularly interesting case. There are efforts to link it with other measures, such as an expansion of paid family leave after a woman gives birth, or an increase in assistance to teen parents. This strategy gives real substance to the inherent connection between the pro-life and pro-woman messages, and it reaches out to form coalitions across party and ideological lines.”

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by Matt Tyson

It isn’t often we get an opening like this.

Despite attempts by the mainstream media to twist the story around, reverse blame, or play dumb, the recent undercover videos of Planned Parenthood reps discussing price and procedure for the retrieval of organs from aborted children are damning enough to play in our favor.

No, technically there no crime was committed (that we know of), and yes, Planned Parenthood has been doing this for quite some time.

But in the end, none of that is really here nor there, because the best thing these videos did is rip the carpet right out from under the “it’s not a human, it’s a fetus/product of conception/blob of cells” talking point that so many supporters use to side step the God-awful truth about abortion.

And this is very, very, very good.

But.

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by Mary Ann Chimera, president of DFL-OH

This is the beginning of a list of ways in which you can let it be known that you are a Democrat who stands up for life. The list is incomplete. I invite anyone who cares to step in to suggest still other ways.

1. Become a member of Democrats for Life of America (DFLA). Politics is a game of numbers, of how many votes can be delivered. The more of us who are standing together in an organized way, the more effective is our clout and the more our views will gain attention.
2. Encourage every pro-life Democrat you know to become part of our movement by joining DFLA or your state chapter. Membership in one is membership in the other.
3. Distribute our brochures. This can be done at Party meetings and functions, county fairs, festivals and anywhere else you can think of. Brochures can be obtained through your state chapter and there is also one you can duplicate at democratsforlife.org.
4. Organize a local or campus group affiliated with DFLA. Hold meetings to discuss effective strategies for spreading the pro-life/DFLA message, especially among Democrats. Then, act on those strategies.
5. Write letters to the editor discussing pro-life issues from a Democratic perspective. (We’re usually gentler and more concerned with the Mom than is the GOP.)
6. Contact your state and national officeholders to encourage them to vote pro-life. Inform them of your stand. Keep in touch with them to let them know your thinking. If it seems to you that groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood are doing their thinking for them, gently point out your different perspective. Suggest how you think they should vote on upcoming legislation,

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Planned Parenthood speaks the truth about the humanity of the unborn

When Dr. Deborah Nucatola, medical director of Planned Parenthood, describes the process by which the organization preserves and removes organs and tissues in unborn children during abortions, it exposed Planned Parenthood’s false claims that its overriding concern is for women’s health. Even more importantly, it exposed the lies that are made to attempt to maintain support for abortion through denying the humanity of the unborn.

In the video, Dr. Nucatola admits that Planned Parenthood clinics alter procedures in order to extract the organs and tissues from unborn children. She says that they consider this in deciding where to grab and crush the child with forceps, and even in manipulating the child to change its “presentation” (breech or feet-first) in order to preserve body parts intact. Whether or not the latter activity violates the law against partial-birth abortion, as some have suggested, it is unethical and gives the lie to Planned Parenthood’s claim that its first priority is to protect women’s health. In the medical field, one does not alter standard medical procedure in order to preserve the possibility of harvesting body parts if the patient dies. This elevation of organ harvesting over women’s safety is directly in line with their fight to prevent abortion clinics from meeting surgical safety standards.

Whether or not Planned Parenthood’s activities are illegal—a full investigation should occur to determine this. But they are incredibly troubling nevertheless and it is difficult to see how this practice is not illegal. Nucatola casually describes killing a human being and stripping it—that dehumanized object—of its parts, and she described this all while she was enjoying a fine meal, with wine, like a civilized human. She nonchalantly talks about how one can “crush” a head being while preserving his or her organs. Continue reading →