A few years ago, the Human Life Foundation’s Defender of Life annual award was given to Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, and in the brochure noting his accomplishments I learned that the congressman is co-chairman of the bipartisan pro-life caucus. Bipartisan? In amazement, I asked him if there really are pro-life Democrats in Congress. “Oh yes,” he assured me, “about 30.” He went on to name one, but I promised Smith I would not mention the congressman’s name in my column.

I probably have it my notes somewhere and for all I know it might have been Bart Stupak — who has announced tonight he will vote in favor of “health-care reform,” relying on an Obama “signing statement” to allay his concerns over government funding for abortion — but what Rep. Smith’s conversation revealed to me is that the pro-life Democrats do not wear their convictions overtly.

Well, they all had to come out of the closet tonight to vote for their belief in the sanctity of human life but instead they gave their obeisance to the One and his minions from hell. In this video we learn that the so-called pro-life Democrat Stupak never intended to vote NO.


At that same HLF dinner, National Review senior editor, Ramesh Ponnuru, introduced Mr. Smith. In his book, The Party of Death, Mr. Ponnuru makes no bones about which political party deserves that description.

At the time I covered the dinner for the New York Sun, I didn’t think it was wise to use such hyperbolic language about the nation’s majority political group, but those strong words are overdue in describing the culture that’s being promoted today. Abortion on demand, embryonic destruction, euthanasia, and animal rights now displace human rights. It wasn’t the GOP pulling the plug on the disabled Terry Schiavo.

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The Human Life Foundation, based in Manhattan, publishes a review of essays and reprints of articles exploring all aspects of respecting life. A self-described “Jewish atheist,” Nat Hentoff, was also an honoree by the foundation, and he declared that respect for life is not a religious issue:

It is a fundamental human rights issue that has been clouded and deliberately distorted for a left-wing political agenda.

The real horror of the Terry Schiavo case, Mr. Hentoff insists, is the danger it unleashed to the rights of the disabled.

The elemental right to life supersedes all other rights. George Mckenna wrote an article for Human Life Review that delineates the Democrat/Catholic symbiosis and why the abortion issue now makes that connection invalid. In his essay, “Criss-Cross: Democrats, Republican, and Abortion,” Mr. Mckenna writes::

…the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church have always been on the same wave length as regards social and economic rights, particularly the rights of the poor, weak, and vulnerable members of society.

The Reagan Democrats came to life in 1980 when they realized that it wasn’t their father’s party anymore.

Tonight, the Party of Death continues to live up to its name.