Anti-Abortion Democrats Feel Homeless

Democrats for Life of America met in Chicago Monday on the far, far periphery of the Democratic National Convention. In a small, windowless WeWork conference room on the 19th floor of a downtown office building, a little over a dozen people attended a discussion about the future of anti-abortion politics in the Democratic Party. At a convention where “joy” is one of the bywords, no one here seemed especially thrilled about the state of abortion politics.

I had met Kristen Day, the group’s executive director, at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. At that time, Democrats had been gradually moving away from the rhetoric that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” But abortion rights weren’t a primary focus of the 2016 convention. “A lot has changed since then,” Day told me in Chicago. “It’s getting uncomfortable.”