Will the DNC make room for Pro-Life Democrats?

Richard Cohen still deals in caricature when speaking of pro-life Republicans in this Washington Post piece, but he also suggests Democrats should stop being so hostile to the pro-life members of their party.

[Abortion] is no longer what it was -- simply about women's rights and sexual freedom. It is, as its opponents say, about life -- arguably about the taking of it.

Yet the party insists otherwise. It entertains no doubts and counters reasonable questions and qualms with slogans -- a woman's right to choose, for instance. The party is downright inhospitable to abortion opponents. Therefore, it was good Sunday to hear Howard Dean -- both a physician and pro-choice -- say on "Meet the Press" that "I have long believed that we ought to make a home for pro-life Democrats."

Do I detect a cultural shift?

In his column, Cohen compares the original Alfie with the remake, a subject I brought up way back here.

In the first "Alfie" a woman of his acquaintance gets an abortion. In the second she does not. Therein lies my tale.

The second "Alfie" was obviously made before folks such as me decided that moral values were what made George Bush the winner of this year's presidential contest. Still, very little about making films is an accident -- movies cost too much -- so I can posit that someone had sensed that the zeitgeist had shifted: Abortion is no longer seen as central to sexual liberation but rather as much more troubling and problematic. Over the years, the so-called right-to-life movement has changed some minds.

This entry may also be pertinent to the subject.

(Hat tip: Carol Platt Liebau)