WASHINGTON — Voters decided on a variety of issues related to Catholic social teaching on Nov. 4. There were a number of pro-life victories, although immigration reform is more uncertain than ever.

Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, with nine pro-life candidates winning their races against Democratic opponents who support legal abortion.

“We made great gains in the Senate,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee.

With seven newly elected pro-life senators, and a possible eighth in Alaska, once the vote count is finished, the Senate will have a bipartisan pro-life majority, not simply Republican control.

Pro-lifers regard this as particularly key in the context of any judicial appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court or other federal courts, as a pro-life Senate will hold the power to deny confirmation to any pro-abortion nominees President Barack Obama might choose.

Tobias noted that pro-life candidates did very well against pro-abortion challengers.

“We were in 26 races where we went head to head with [Emily’s List], where we had one of our pro-life candidates against one of their pro-abortion women, and we won 19 of the 26,” she said. “We thought that was a great statistic to add to everything.”

Several prominent candidates heavily campaigned on abortion rights and lost. Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis lost to Republican Greg Abbott for Texas governor. Davis gained prominence after mounting an 11th-hour filibuster in 2013 to derail legislation restricting abortion.

Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democratic incumbent, campaigned so heavily on abortion rights that he was dubbed “Mark Uterus,” only to lose to GOP challenger Rep. Cory Gardner.

Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law graduate whose lobbying for government-mandated birth control propelled her to fame as an icon of the “War on Women” theme, lost her own bid for state Senate in California.

 

Women Win With a Pro-Life Message

By contrast, Saira Blair, an 18-year-old pro-life Catholic, became the youngest legislator in the country with her election to West Virginia’s House of Delegates.

And another pro-life woman, Elise Stefanik, won election to the U.S. House as an upstate New York representative, becoming, at age 31, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

“To me, the thing that is most exciting is it represents the pushback against this idea that you cannot win based on a pro-life message,” said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life.

Yoest said the Democrats’ “War on Women” theme — which portrays opposition to abortion and contraception as an attack on women’s rights — has also become exposed as a “hollow message that has run its course,” pointing to the election of other pro-life women such as Jodi Ernst, the winner of Iowa’s hard-fought U.S. Senate race, and Mia Love, a black pro-life Mormon woman elected in Utah to the U.S. House.

“I think it really backfired on them,” she said.

Yoest said the upcoming legislative priorities are the 20-week abortion fetal-pain ban, removing taxpayer funding of abortion from federal programs and vigilance over President Obama’s picks to the federal bench and potentially the U.S. Supreme Court.

“A lot of hard work has been done that has paid off, but a lot of hard work now begins,” said Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life.

Father Pavone said pro-life voters should build relationships with state and federal elected representatives and show them that these issues are important and have their support.

 

Pro-life Amendments and Personhood

Another pro-life victory at the ballot box took place in Tennessee, where voters passed the “Yes on 1” constitutional amendment.

“Tennessee was the big one,” Tobias said, noting that the amendment overturned a state Supreme Court ruling that prevented passage of any pro-life legislation and was making the state “the abortion destination of the South.”

“They can now go back to the [state] Legislature and tell them, ‘Now you can start passing pro-life laws,’ because the Constitution does not say that abortion is guaranteed,” she said.

However, voters rejected North Dakota’s Measure 1, 64% to 36%, which was designed to head off judicial activism that would invalidate the state’s pro-life legislation.

Father Pavone believes the influx of outside money was a big factor in the amendment losing.

“To me, it’s no reflection on the pro-life movement,” he said, pointing out that more than 90% of money against it was coming out of state and creating “disinformation.”

“Pro-abortion propaganda easily gets in the way of these measures.”

Colorado voters rejected for the third time an amendment to define the unborn child as a person under state law, 63% to 37%. The previous two attempts were rejected by at least 70% of voters.

 

Pro-Life Democrats Dwindle

However, the 2014 midterms saw pro-life Democrats lose another seat in Congress, after Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia lost to his Republican challenger. This brings down the number of pro-life Democrats in the House to two, as none of the other pro-life Democratic candidates endorsed by Democrats for Life of America won against their Republican opponents.

Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., co-chair of the bipartisan Pro-Life Caucus, said he understood the “mistrust” that pro-life voters felt after the Democrats’ pro-life congressional bloc split in 2010 between those who followed Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and those like Lipinski, who refused to vote for the ACA without statutory protections against funding abortion.

In the three election cycles since that vote, pro-life Democrats in the House have dropped from more than 40 Democrats with complete or mixed pro-life records to the current number of two. 

But Lipinski said that for the pro-life movement to bet all its chips on Republican electoral success is a counterproductive strategy in the long run. He said the pro-life community needs to invest itself in supporting authentic pro-life candidates in the Democratic Party for two reasons.

A voter wave that kicks out Republicans from power could risk decades of pro-life gains if they are not replaced by pro-life Democratic alternatives. And, Lipinski said, “Once this becomes a one-party issue, it will be even more difficult to push the Republican Party to embrace a pro-life agenda and push pro-life legislation. I think that’s dangerous for the pro-life movement.”

With pro-life Democrats at the local and state level, Lipinski said it is possible to create change at the national level, particularly by raising up leaders from the black and Latino communities that have more socially conservative values than many of their elected leaders. But the key is getting the pro-life community involved in the fight at the primary level, where the abortion lobby is spending its money to purge pro-life leaders from the national scene.

“The primary is where pro-life Democrats get weeded out,” said Lipinski.

“What’s been going on is that the outside organizations, such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL, are sending the message that you should not try to run for office if you’re a pro-life Democrat.”

“The only way to counter it is money from the pro-life side,” he said.

“Money does make a difference, and the pro-choice side knows this.”

 

Pot Passes and Wage Hikes

The legal-marijuana movement also notched three victories in Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C. in voter initiatives, while voters in Florida rejected a medical-marijuana initiative.

Church leaders have opposed the legalization of marijuana in society, although they have advocated for reforming the justice system that deals very heavily with convicted drug consumers.

The Catholic bishops of Alaska, Archbishop Roger Schwietz of Anchorage and Bishop Edward Burns of Juneau, said in a statement to the Register that the outcome of the vote was “disappointing.”

“Alaskans value their independence. However, personal freedom that is not balanced by sensible legislation for the common good destroys the communities that are the guarantors of our personal freedom,” they stated.

“As Catholics, we believe we have a responsibility to one another and to the wider community. Recognizing the state of Alaska has the worst statistics in the nation regarding chemical dependency, domestic violence and suicide, we believe passage of this initiative adds significant risks to the physical and spiritual health of those living in our state.”

Four states passed minimum-wage increases — Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota — but only Alaska and South Dakota tied the minimum wage to the rate of inflation.

The U.S. bishops’ conference has generally supported increases in the minimum wage and called on lawmakers in Washington in January to promote just wages that can support a worker and his family.

 

Immigration’s Uncertain Future

But while the pro-life movement has ridden the Republican wave, the immigration-reform movement and proposals to give 11 million undocumented workers legal status are now in a much more fragile position.

While House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, a Catholic, has revived the discussion of working with Obama to reform the immigration system, Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action for America, noted that most of the elected GOP candidates ran on an “anti-amnesty” platform and said that any reform would likely deal with the legal status of undocumented immigrants last.

“Fix the problem, make sure you know it is fixed and the American people have faith and confidence that it is fixed, and you can go down that route,” he said.

Holler said the real risk was that Obama would act on pledges to take executive action on the legal status of undocumented immigrants and kill any movement for reform.

“If and when he does that, it would likely jeopardize the chance of anything happening legislatively.”

Manny Garcia-Tuñon, a spokesman for the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders (CALL), said his organization has had “reason to be concerned” over the government’s efforts on immigration reform, along with other issues important to Catholics. But he indicated that it is difficult to forecast how reform will fare under Republicans as opposed to the previous divided Congress that did not agree on a comprehensive bill.

“What we’ve seen in the past is an unwillingness on the part of Washington to work together,” he said, adding CALL will have to see whether both parties can work together to address the issue or whether it will get mired once again in political gridlock.

“Really at the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter who has control of either or both the House and the Senate,” he said. “There should be a willingness to come together and work on these issues that we know are necessary for the country.”

“The Church has always been constant and consistent when it comes to life and immigration reform,” he said. “The Church’s number one concern has to do with the dignity of the human person, and we’re asking them right now to do something to really honor that.”

Peter Jesserer Smith is the Register’s Washington correspondent.