Mark Levin: It’s time for a ‘true discussion’ about race and abortion… Life, Liberty and Levin host Mark Levin challenged the Democratic Party during his Sunday monologue about the history of racism and abortion in America. “The Democrat Party doesn’t want to talk about inflation, immigration, food prices, gasoline prices, crime,” Levin said. “It wants to talk about race, and it wants to talk about abortion. So let’s talk about race and abortion, but it’s time for a true discussion.” Levin listed Democrats going back to President Woodrow Wilson, recounting their racism or associations with racists, but he saved some powerful condemnation for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “But the Democratic Party’s greatest icon was FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, largely due to his new deal agenda, it transformed United States away from constitutionalism and capitalism toward centralism and socialism,”
Levin said. “For this reason, more that been done to immunize his representation from his racist legacy than any other public figure dead or alive.” Levin recounted the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR’s presidency, “1942. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9006,” which he summarized as “the military rounding up 120,000 Japanese Americans including 70,000 U.S. citizens, that were forcibly relocated to internment camps in remote parts of the country. 10 different military camps in the Midwest, 1 in Arkansas. They lost their homes, property and their liberties.”
Levin questioned at how Democrats demand to tear down monuments to confederate generals and change the names of entire military bases yet asked “How is it the name ‘the Democrat Party persists and continues?” Levin offered his theory that the name remains unchanged, “Because they control the culture right now.” In addition, Levin took aim at Margaret Sanger, the controversial founder of Planned Parenthood. “The big push for abortion came at beginning of the last century with Margaret Sanger who founded the Planned Parenthood organization, which your tax dollars have gone to in the aggregate amount of billions of dollars to support,” he said. Levin condemned modern Democrats for supporting partial-birth abortion, describing the procedure in gruesome detail, which could hypothetically done up until the moment of birth. He pivoted back to discussing where the abortion movement began in America, calling out Margaret Sanger as “the great feminist who founded Planned Parenthood.” He read accounts of how she pushed for forced sterilization of tens of thousands and presented at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1926. He read one quote attributed to Sanger where she proclaimed “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” “She was a horrific racist,” Levin said, noting that “It wasn’t until a year or so ago, that Planned Parenthood and other apologists for Margaret Sanger finally threw in the towel, 100 years later, and said yes she was a eugenicist.” He warned that even today, “79% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion activity takes place in minority neighborhoods, mostly Black neighborhoods.” “This is the history of that organization, this is the history of the radical abortion movement, this is the history of the Democrat Party. Now you want to talk about race and abortion? Let’s do it,” Levin concluded his monologue.
JFK Wouldn’t Even Be Allowed To Speak At Today’s Democratic National Convention - Fifty years ago today, Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John F. Kennedy. I’m probably not the first person to remind you of that today. But as everyone looks back wistfully on America’s Camelot, this is a good opportunity to remember that the JFK of a half century ago would not be looked at so fondly by today’s “progressives.”
As John F. Kennedy’s tax-rate-cut, strong dollar economic policy was being articulated and then implemented in the latter half of the presidency, the nation embarked upon an eight-and-a-half year, uninterrupted run of growth at just over 5% per year. Rarely have campaign promises, especially one so bold as to double the long-term rate of economic growth, been so comprehensively fulfilled.
Even ignoring JFK’s views on taxes, communism, the military, and a host of other issues, it is unlikely that JFK would have gotten past the litmus test for today’s Democratic Party—abortion. If JFK were here today it is unlikely that he would even be permitted to speak at the Democratic National Convention, much less be the standard bearer for today’s abortion-focused Democratic Party.
It should be admitted at the outset that JFK said very little about his views on abortion, since in his time abortion was not a hot political topic. In fact, Planned Parenthood itself was not publicly in favor of abortion in 1963. Brochures from the organization, still in use in 1963 (and for years thereafter), explain that birth control (which they supported) is not the same as abortion (which they did not):
Is [birth control] an abortion? Definitely not. An abortion … kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it.
The only quote I know of from JFK himself likewise evinces an apparent opposition to abortion, saying that using abortion as a means of population control—as Japan had done — “would be repugnant to most Americans.”
Of course JFK’s sister Eunice (Shriver) was an outspoken pro-life advocate throughout her life. And even his brother Teddy, an abortion supporter later in life, was pro-life in the days of Camelot. In a 1971 letter to a constituent, Senator Ted Kennedy explained
It is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. … [O]nce life has begun, no matter at what stage of growth, it is my belief that termination should not be decided merely by desire.
And in 1973, after the Roe decision, and as abortion advocates were seeking to force Catholic hospitals and medical professionals to violate their faith and perform abortions, Sen. Ted Kennedy not only voted for the Church Amendments to protect rights of conscience, he defended that freedom on the floor of the Senate.
None of this, of course, conclusively proves that JFK was a pro-life zealot— nor that he would necessarily be one today. But that’s beside the point. To be a member in good standing of today’s Democratic Party silence on abortion is insufficient. Active support is necessary. The last Democratic National Convention featured no pro-life Democrats. I’m not talking about a ban on pro-life advocacy at the podium. I mean that no pro-life Democrat was, for example, permitted to speak on education or healthcare.
This continued a virtually unbroken string of exclusively pro-abortion speakers at the DNC following the 1992 decision to prevent pro-life Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey from speaking at the DNC. Kristen Day, the Executive Director of Democrats for Life, has observed that the Democratic Party’s platform now fails to even recognize the existence of pro-life Democratic views. “Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the abortion lobby have a choke-hold on the Democratic Party,” according to Day.
Certainly, many of JFK’s views would still be consistent with today’s Democratic Party. But the same could be said of former Congressman Bart Stupak, former Governor Bob Casey and others who found themselves on the wrong side of today’s DNC litmus test. It is very unlikely that the JFK of America’s lost Camelot would have seen eye to eye with Cecile Richards and today’s Planned Parenthood on abortion. It is even less likely that he would have supported the mandate for abortifacient coverage for every elderly nun that motivated the “War on Women” at the last DNC. And without passing that abortion litmus test, JFK would likely find no home in today’s abortion-focused Democratic Party.
