The end of pro-life Democrats

Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) is going to vote with the overwhelming majority of his party in favor of a Democratic bill to codify Roe v. Wade in the aftermath of a leak showing a majority of the Supreme Court may be ready to reverse the 1973 abortion decision.

Casey's reversal signals the end for pro-life Democrats. He has campaigned as a moderate opponent of abortion, a stance that helped him win his Senate seat in the 2006 race against Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). His father and namesake was an even stronger pro-life Democrat.

Indeed, the elder Bob Casey, then governor of Pennsylvania, was denied a speaking slot at the 1992 Democratic National Convention at least in part because of his abortion views. And he was the "Casey" in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), a decision that came within a Justice Anthony Kennedy of overturning Roe 30 years ago and still wound up expanding the range of permissible abortion restrictions.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Now there is at most one maximally pro-life Democrat in each house of Congress. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va) represents a state that voted for former President Donald Trump by 40 points and is its last Democratic lawmaker. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) is facing a primary challenge and intense criticism within the party. And though Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) was first elected to the House as an abortion opponent, as the Democratic nominee for Senate, he now defends late-term abortions. He's following a Democratic tradition that includes President Biden himself.

If Roe truly goes, the partisan sorting on abortion will have paid one dividend to the pro-life cause: Republican presidents, especially Trump, who sent the issue back to the states. But the disappearance of pro-life Democrats could make it harder to enact a more just post-Roe abortion regime or create a patchwork of wildly disparate laws in red and blue states.

Political movements often benefit from bipartisan support. The Hyde amendment, which bans most federal funding of abortion, is named after a Republican congressman but was first passed by a Democratic majority. Now it could be imperiled by the next blue wave, at a moment when abortion policy may be more controlled by elected officials than at any time in the last half century.