Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said Friday that as far as she is concerned, there must be a litmus test for Democrats running for elected office. If a candidate is pro-life, there is no place available for him or her in the Democrat party.

Abortion is a hot-button topic in 2019, more so than usual because of the extreme positions taken by Democrats in recent months, including late-term abortions up to the moment of delivery. The party of infanticide has no room for pro-life Democrats if we are to listen to Jayapal. Her extreme opinion on what it takes to be a Democrat running for office in 2020 includes marching in lockstep in support of abortion up to the moment of delivery, supporting open borders, and sexual preferences trump everything.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: "You can't say you're a Democrat if you're against immigrants, if you're against abortion, if you're against gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. I'm not sure what it means to be a Democrat if all of those things are true." https://t.co/UtmasaQ0cA pic.twitter.com/qlLQ1A7hpn

— The Hill (@thehill) May 17, 2019

Her litmus test on what it means to be a Democrat fails the basic premise of the left – diversity is good and the Democrat Party is a big tent party. There is no room for diversity of thought in Jayapal’s world. Perhaps diversity is limited to the color of one’s skin or a person’s gender. That doesn’t sound very progressive to me.

Jayapal acknowledged that all members of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), for example, fund the committee to support Democrat candidates around the country. That membership includes members who do not agree with 100% of her far-left ideas. Shouldn’t more reasonable Democrats be represented by the committee’s leadership, too? It sounds like the Democrats who run the unions in America. They take union dues from everyone, including from conservative-leaning blue collar working people yet rarely dole out big bucks for any candidates other than Democrats.

So, any pro-life Democrats left in office better watch their backs when it comes to re-election in 2020. Rep. Jayapal wants the message to be clear – her positions are what make a person a Democrat. Full stop. That includes incumbents. In her opinion, there should be some primary challenges to incumbents unwilling to fall in line. The problem with this hard-line view is that most Democrat voters don’t accept late term abortion, except in extreme situations like the health of the mother.

Democrats appeared divided on the issue with 60 percent favoring considerable limits on abortion, a Marist poll revealed in January. In that same poll, only 28 percent of Democrats said they thought abortion should be available at any point in the pregnancy.

Some pro-life Democrats, the few that are left in the party, will feel the pressure as they run for re-election. One is an Illinois Democrat running for re-election to the House.

Illinois Democrat Dan Lipinski is one of only a few pro-life Democrats still on Capitol Hill, and he has come under fire from progressive activists who want to defeat him in 2020.

Several groups and Rep. Ro Khanna, a prominent member of the CPC, have come out to endorse Marie Newman, a political with the backing of several pro-choice groups like Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s List.

“In a time when the president and GOP have made it clear that stripping away the fundamental rights of women is at the top of their agenda, we must have a leader to stand up against Trump. That is not Congressman Dan Lipinski,” Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, said in a statement.

Jayapal’s comments Friday are at odds with the declarative statement from Louisiana’s Democrat Governor John Bel Edwards, who is a pro-life Democrat running for re-election, that he will sign a heartbeat law if it arrives on his desk. He is unapologetically pro-life. The bill, if it clears the state legislature, will ban abortion after the fetal heartbeat can be heard, usually at the 6 week point in a pregnancy. The bill, by the way, was introduced in the state senate by a Democrat.

Governor Bel Edwards said it is his “inclination to sign” the bill. And, it is consistent with his pro-life record in office, both as a legislator and governor.

The governor explained on his monthly radio show May 8 that signing such a bill would be in line with the values of the pro-life Democrats he knew in the state of Louisiana.

“I know that for many in the national party, on the national scene, that’s not a good fit. But I will tell you, here in Louisiana, I speak and meet with Democrats who are pro-life every single day,” Edwards said.

The Democratic party’s 2016 platform said that “every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion.”

Edwards campaigned on a pro-life platform when he was first elected governor in 2015. In a TV ad released during the campaign, he explained how he and his wife opted not to have an abortion even when the couple discovered their daughter would have a spinal birth defect when she was born.

The Louisiana law has an amendment that specifies that implementation would be delayed until the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rules on Mississippi’s Senate Bill 2116. So the law doesn’t immediately go into effect if/when the governor signs it into law. Louisiana isn’t going too far out on the limb with a pro-life message.

I’ll end with a tweet from President Trump. Trump is considered by many to be the most pro-life of all American presidents.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1129954110747422720

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1129954115205914625

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1129954116489404416