By: Loren D’Amico 


The following is a proposed platform for Democrats with a religious background:

Having an unplanned, unwanted, and/or unhealthy pregnancy is a significant and often negative event for the woman involved.  As a society, it’s important to provide women’s health services to prevent and address this situation.  Various groups, religious or otherwise, have different moral codes regarding the appropriateness and/or morality of various preventative or corrective measures.  In order to function as a pluralistic society, we must make all options available so the parties involved can make a decision.  This means that we favor making abortion safe, legal, accessible, and affordable.  However, we also recognize that many women would only choose to have an abortion as an action of last resort.  Therefore, we further favor making preventative measures equally accessible and affordable.  We also favor measures to support a woman who chooses against abortion, either by choosing to have the child or give them up for adoption.  This includes supporting the following:

·         Universal healthcare coverage that includes all forms of women’s health screenings; birth control; and pre-natal, birth, and postpartum services.

·         Family planning services and counseling

·         School sex education including both abstinence and birth control.

·         WIC, Food Stamps, Section 8 and other financial support to families with 
          children.

·         Universal state funded Pre-K

·         Needs tested government subsidized child care

·         Federal funding to reduce the cost of infant adoption.

·         Providing Title X funds to all facilities that provide Title X services, whether 
          they refer for abortions or not.

·         Paid family leave for new parents