The party of abortion?

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto discusses how Democratic leadership was willing to shut down the government over funding America's biggest abortion provider.

A news story in Saturday's New York Times begins by observing that "the emergence of abortion as the last and most contentious of the issues" in the budget dispute "highlighted the enduring influence of social conservatives within the Republican Party." It seems to us that this gets it backward.

The Times, of course, views "social conservatives" as deviants and their opponents as normal--note how they're seldom even termed "social liberals." But if you look at the question from a more neutral point of view, there's no escaping the conclusion that Democrats are more dogmatically pro-abortion than Republicans are antiabortion. It was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who were willing to shut down the government over subsidies to Planned Parenthood.