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WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton played the pro-abortion card in the Jan. 8 New Hampshire presidential primary, suggesting Barack Obama is less committed to abortion rights than she is.

Obama responded by recruiting the local head of Planned Parenthood to make a testimonial on his behalf, highlighting Obama’s “100% pro-choice record.”

But as the two frontrunners for the Democratic nomination duel to demonstrate their pro-abortion credentials to their party’s activist base, pro-life Catholic Democrats warn that this pro-abortion tilt will hurt the party in the November presidential election.

“It will certainly alienate some Catholic voters,” said David Carlin, a Democrat who served as majority leader of the Rhode Island Senate in 1989-1990.

The Associated Press reported Jan. 7 that the Clinton campaign had distributed a mailing questioning Obama’s pro-abortion voting record as a state senator from Illinois. The mailing said he had voted “present” on seven bills dealing with abortion, rather than taking a position for or against.

In response to the mailing, the Obama campaign made automated calls accusing the Clinton campaign of making “last-minute smears,” the Associated Press reported.

In the automated calls, Wendy Frosh, chairwoman of the board of Planned Parenthood in Northern New England, said Obama “has a 100% pro-choice record and has always been a champion for women’s rights.”

No one questions Clinton’s loyalty to the abortion lobby, but Obama’s political history suggests he is equally pro-abortion.

Like Clinton, he earned a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America for his voting record on abortion-related bills in the U.S. Senate in 2006. (NARAL has not yet posted information on 2007 voting records on its website).

And Obama argued forcefully against any legislative protection for unborn children right up to the time of birth when he was serving as a state senator in Illinois in 2001.

“Whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a 9-month old — child that was delivered to term,” Obama warned during debate over three state bills that would have offered protection to babies who are born alive after unsuccessful abortions. “That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.”

The campaign offices of Clinton and Obama did not reply to questions submitted by the Register about whether their candidates were concerned that their pro-abortion advocacy might cost the Democratic Party the support of some Catholic voters in the 2008 presidential election.

Mark Stricherz is a Washington-based Catholic commentator and author of the new book Why the Democrats are Blue: How Secular Liberals Hijacked the People’s Party.

Stricherz said Obama’s and Clinton’s pro-abortion stances echo the party’s long-standing commitment to abortion rights, which has been a key contributor to the drift of Catholic voters away from the party.

“Catholics have gone from a strong Democratic constituency in 1968 to a marginally Republican one now,” Stricherz noted. “I think that the abortion issue is a major cause of it.”

Stricherz said the Democrats’ stance on abortion, and on other hot-button social issues such as support for same-sex “marriage,” is a consequence of the domination of the national party since the 1970s by secular activists.

He says this activist domination occurred because of four policies instituted by the party during this period: assigning quotas for female delegates, virtually all of whom are feminist activists; allowing only registered Democrats to vote in party primaries; selecting delegates by caucuses, which tend to be dominated by party activists, rather than by primaries in a number of states; and requiring that one-fifth of convention delegates are unelected “superdelegates” appointed to represent various interest groups.

According to Stricherz, the net result has been the creation of a party that is permanently structured to promote the beliefs of activists, instead of more typical Americans.

Stricherz said, “The party needs to be democratized.”

Carlin, who teaches sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, agreed his party has changed radically since the New Deal days of Franklin Roosevelt, when Democrats enjoyed overwhelming Catholic support.

He attributes the change in party values to the control of the Democrats by wealthy elites who have “a very libertarian attitude when it comes to certain moral questions, especially sexual questions.”

“It’s no longer the Democratic party it was back in the days of Harry Truman and Franklyn Roosevelt,” said Carlin, who discussed the issue in depth in his 2005 book Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?

Carlin said that at the national level, the Democrats today are “essentially an anti-Christian party.”

“I’m not saying that Hillary Clinton is anti-Christian, or that Barack Obama is,” Carlin said. “But the people who are really controlling the party ideologically and financially have little use for religion in general and Christianity in particular.”

Added Carlin, “If you wish to have the nomination of the party, you’d better go along with it even if you don’t personally agree with it.”

Carlin noted that it wasn’t just faithful Catholics who have abandoned the Democrats. Evangelical Protestants, who were once another key Democratic constituency, have almost completely deserted the party because of its hostility to their moral beliefs.

Carlin noted that the once dominant national Democrats have lost six of the last nine presidential elections. But he’s not hopeful that the party will reverse its secularist course and he predicts more election defeats as a result.

“I don’t know how long it will take them to learn the lesson,” said Carlin, who hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1992. “If you keep doing this, if you run on an agenda that is essentially anti-Christian … that’s not a good thing to do in a country that’s still largely Christian.”

Tom McFeely is based in

Victoria, British Columbia.