Democrats’ potential VP picks and their extreme abortion records
Rumors are swirling about potential candidates for vice president on the Democratic ticket.
Some of the candidates reportedly have started the vetting process already, others say they have not. But one thing is certain: what they all have in common is a solid record of pro-abortion extremism.
Andy Beshear (governor, Kentucky)
As attorney general of Kentucky, Beshear refused to defend the state’s existing pro-life laws. While running for governor he accepted campaign contributions from local abortionists. When Beshear vetoed legislation to protect babies from painful late-term abortions, stop mail-order abortion drugs, and more, lawmakers swiftly and resoundingly overrode his veto. Beshear even refused to sign born-alive protections – allowing them to become law without his signature.
Roy Cooper (governor, North Carolina)
During Cooper’s tenure as governor, he has repeatedly vetoed commonsense pro-life legislation. Egregiously, Cooper vetoed the Care for Women, Children and Families Act, which protects an estimated 3,000 unborn children annually at 12 weeks’ gestation while also providing $160 million in support for children, families and maternal health, on Mother’s Day weekend.
In 2021, Cooper vetoed the Human Life Nondiscrimination Act/No Eugenics (H.B. 453), which would protect babies in the womb from being targeted for lethal discrimination because of their race, sex or disability, including conditions like Down syndrome. In 2019, he vetoed protections for babies born alive after failed abortions.
Mark Kelly (U.S. senator, Arizona)
The only federal lawmaker on the list so far, Kelly has kept a relatively low public profile on abortion, but he is no less radical. Kelly is an original co-sponsor of the Democrats’ 50-state, all-trimester abortion mandate, the deceptively named “Women’s Health Protection Act.” He holds an F on SBA Pro-Life America’s National Pro-Life Scorecard and consistently votes for taxpayer-funded abortion. On the second anniversary of Dobbs he condemned the decision, saying, “I won't stop fighting until we restore federal abortion rights and this anniversary is just a memory.” Presumably, the lives of children saved by pro-life protections made possible by Dobbs would also be a memory.
JB Pritzker (governor, Illinois)
Pritzker memorably pledged to make Illinois an “oasis” for abortion and has signed some of the most radical abortion laws in the nation. From 2019, his first year as governor, to 2022 – the last year for which data are available – abortions in Illinois increased more than 21%. When Pritzker is not working to expand abortion on demand in his own state, he is using his substantial fortune to expand radical abortion policies into pro-life states by bankrolling efforts to rewrite their constitutions.
Josh Shapiro (governor, Pennsylvania)
Don’t be fooled by Shapiro’s overtures to Pennsylvania moderates. He is still the pro-abortion activist who, as attorney general, sued the Little Sisters of the Poor (unsuccessfully) to try to make them violate their beliefs. Previously during his time in the state legislature, in the aftermath of the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, Shapiro voted against a bill requiring surgical abortion facilities to follow the same health and safety regulations as all other surgical facilities in Pennsylvania – a specific recommendation of the Gosnell grand jury. SB 732 nevertheless passed in a bipartisan, three-to-one vote.
During the time Shapiro was AG in the administration of pro-abortion Governor Tom Wolf, tragically but unsurprisingly, abortion numbers hit a 10-year peak and reported complications from abortions tripled. After Shapiro took over as governor in 2023, that year, half of the state’s abortion facilities failed health inspections.
Unfazed, this year Shapiro unilaterally canceled funding for alternatives to abortion to send it to already-flush-with-cash abortion businesses instead.
Tim Walz (governor, Minnesota)
In January 2023, Walz signed the “PRO Act,” what was at the time the country’s most extreme law enshrining abortion on demand throughout pregnancy as a “fundamental right” without limits of any kind. The law consistently applies this “right” to “an individual,” without any age limits. Debate on the bill in the state Senate was marked by Democrats rejecting more than 60 Republican amendments to stop partial-birth abortions, painful dismemberment abortions, sex-selection abortions, and discriminatory abortions when an unborn child is thought to have Down syndrome; require parental notification before an abortion for minor girls; and more. Walz then signed further legislation grossly expanding taxpayer-funded abortion, stripping away the state’s informed consent protections, and significantly weakening protections for babies born alive.
On his official X account just this week, Walz boasted, “Minnesota was the first to establish an ironclad right” to abortion without any limits.
Gretchen Whitmer (governor, Michigan)
Whitmer is purportedly not interested in the VP spot, but reports indicate she did receive a vetting request. Whitmer infamously referred to abortion as “life-sustaining” while letting abortion businesses operate freely during the Covid pandemic, when most “nonessential” commerce was shuttered and elective medical procedures indefinitely postponed. She has presided over the implementation of Michigan’s radical pro-abortion constitutional amendment that continues to strip the most basic protections away from unborn children and their mothers, including the state’s law against partial-birth abortion, as it is litigated (we wrote about some of the fallout here: “Joe Biden, Gretchen Whitmer and $36,000 abortions”).
Time after time, Whitmer has vetoed funding for alternatives to abortion, including striking $10 million to promote adoption the month after Dobbs – a fraction of the $76 billion state budget. Though she never tires of telling the public how she will “fight like hell” to expand abortion on demand, Whitmer was uncharacteristically silent when a pro-life advocate was shot while canvassing.
The bottom line
With “Abortion Czar” Kamala Harris presumed to be the nominee for president, former Obama attorney general Eric Holder running the vetting process, and a Democratic Party that increasingly brooks no dissent from its all-trimester, no-limits abortion position, no matter which candidate is chosen, it will be someone who is wildly out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans.