Speaker Paul Ryan has announced that in January the House will take up the reconciliation bill considered earlier this month by the U.S. Senate. The landmark legislation, passed by a vote of 52–47, defunds Planned Parenthood — America’s largest abortion provider — of taxpayer dollars and reroutes the funding to comprehensive health-care centers.

The Huffington Post was mystified when the Senate approved the bill: Why would moderate Republicans, some of whom face tough re-election battles in 2016, vote in favor of the measure? Let me clue them in: It’s because the voters they represent — even many who identify themselves as pro-choice — have deep misgivings about abortion on demand, and are horrified by the practices of the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Gallup found this year that a majority of Americans — 55 percent — oppose abortion in all or most circumstances. CNN put that number at 58 percent in 2014. Republicans, as demonstrated by their persistence in reallocating Planned Parenthood’s funds to comprehensive health-care centers earlier this month, are embracing the task of representing the nation’s growing pro-life majority. Democrats ought to look at the recent statewide elections, take a page from Louisiana governor-elect John Bel Edwards, and do the same.

Edwards, a Democrat, won a gubernatorial contest he was largely expected to lose. In a race against longtime pro-life champion Senator David Vitter, Edwards emphasized his pro-life convictions in a statewide television ad and campaign materials. In the TV ad, Edwards’s wife describes how it felt to discover her child had spina bifida at 20 weeks, at which point she was encouraged by doctors to have an abortion. “I was devastated,” Donna Edwards says in the 30-second spot. “But John Bel never flinched. He just said, ‘No. No, we’re going to love this baby no matter what.’” Edwards is arguably the most outspoken pro-life Democrat elected governor since the late Bob Casey Sr. became governor of Pennsylvania in 1986. He might have won without the TV ad, but he could not have won Louisiana — repeatedly ranked the most pro-life state in the nation — with a pro-choice position.

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Source: Marjorie Dannenfelser, http://www.nationalreview.com