Democratic Candidates Still Largely Pro-Life

Last year I said, “If a candidate with a D next to their name wants to be successful in 2011, they will still believe in the sanctity of life.” And when we look at the top two Democratic candidates for governor- Johnny DuPree and Bill Luckett- that appears to be true with both men backing the Personhood amendment. Jim Hood, the only incumbent Democratic statewide officer, is also pro-life.

The reason I made this point is because some time in 2008, the Mississippi Democratic Party dropped “sanctity of life” language from their website, as Brian Perry noted in this column from three years ago.

Here is the old language:

And here is the updated language:

They dropped the language and simply said they have pro-life and pro-choice members. Pretty bland statement. And as I said, you have to look far and wide to find those pro-choice members who are running for office. More likely, they are the behind the scenes activists who are the driving force of the change.

But what makes this interesting is that it happened during Jamie Franks tenure as state chairman. In a recent interview, Franks complained about Mississippi’s drop in pro-life status over the last four years, said he was pro-life and made no exceptions, and referred to abortion as the killing of an unborn child.

This leads to the next question: why did Franks approve this change? A pretty significant one at that. And if Franks wasn’t involved in this process, who was and why hasn’t Franks said anything about it? You would have thought he would have been less than pleased judging from his latest interview.

Previous to the change, the Mississippi Democratic Party was likely the only Democratic state party in the country with such pro-life language. As for the change, someone needs to tell the Democratic candidates about it.