Illinois Democratic Rep, Dan Lipinski, known as “the last pro-life Democrat,” who barely survived an attempted purge by the progressives dominating his party, in 2020 has succumbed to a second primary challenge from Marie Newman, a pro-abortion progressive activist more in tune with the pro-death  beliefs of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Lipinski regularly attended the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. and generally tried to cling to his pro-life Catholic roots while becoming a target for a party that was finally dropping the pro-choice fraud it had been hiding behind, moving from the right to choose to the obligation to kill up to the moment of birth, sometimes even afterward. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the baby butcher of Philadelphia, was suddenly the patron saint of the full-blown pro-abortion Democrat Party. In 2018 it seemed the  Democrats were finally ready to throw Dan Lipinski under the bus:

Rep. Cheri Bustos of Moline, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has pulled out of a fundraising event for anti-abortion Rep. Dan Lipinski, highlighting the growing concerns in the party about abortion rights.

In a statement sent out on Twitter, Bustos said that she had agreed to attend a fundraiser for Lipinski several months ago, “but I’ve determined that I must cancel my participation in this event.”

“I’m proud to have a 100 percent pro-choice voting record and I’m deeply alarmed by the rapidly escalating attacks on women’s access to reproductive care in several states,” Bustos said.

Lipinski became an endangered species, declared politically extinct by an intolerant left that says “reproductive care” includes leaving a newborn baby on a table, making it comfortable till it dies, as Dem. Gov. Ralph Northam, states. As Abigail Tracy wrote  in Vanity Fair:

In the eyes of many Democrats, Lipinski is practically a Republican, voting with President Trump nearly 40 percent of the time in the 115th Congress. But he is running for re-election in a decidedly blue district, which swung 6 percentage points more Democratic than the national average in the past two presidential elections. In an interview with The New York Times Wednesday night after Bustos, a member of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, announced her decision to pull out of the fundraiser, Lipinski said the D.C.C.C. chair was put “in an incredibly difficult spot” and didn’t assign blame to her, but the “people in the party who are not tolerant. Their narrow views on abortion, he said, are “how we got President Trump -- people felt like they weren’t welcome in the party.” 

They are not, and the unwelcome are not limited to those who believe life begins at conception and ends at natural death.  Lipinski and other Democrats were told you could not be pro-life and be a Democrat. As John Bowden writes in The Hill:

A Democratic lawmaker argued Friday that her party needed to take a strong stance against efforts to restrict abortion rights, telling reporters that it was impossible to be a Democrat and not support the right to an abortion.

At a press conference Friday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal  (D-Wash.) told reporters that the party should only support members who agree to a core set of party principles including support for LGBTQ Americans and immigrants.

"I think the party's response will be strong, and hopefully you've seen [that] it's been strong across the board," Jayapal said to a reporter who asked how the party should respond to recent efforts in Georgia and Alabama to restrict abortion rights.

"Personally, I do think there should be a core set of Democratic ideals that we all agree to," she added. "That you can't say you're a Democrat if you're against immigrants, if you're against abortion, if you're against gay marriage, LGBTQ rights."

Perhaps in an effort to save his seat, after 2018 Lipinski muted his pro-life beliefs, running commercials that didn’t mention the unborn or condemning the abortion-until-birth position of his party and his opponent, calling himself a “common-sense Democrat,” whatever that meant, attacking Newman’s support for one-size fits-all health care like the socialist Medicare-for-all. Lipinski was not visible at the 2020 March for Life, perhaps because President Donald Trump was there, the first sitting President to attend a March for Life event. Lipinski didn’t want any photos with or near Trump. Lipinski also voted to impeach Trump, the most pro-life President in American history. As noted by LifeSiteNews, Lipinski ended up trying to please everybody and ended up pleasing nobody:

Lipinski, who represents Illinois’ Third Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, has mixed voting records on abortion but generally averages above 50 percent from pro-life groups and below 50 percent from pro-abortion ones. He supports requiring doctors to provide live-saving treatment to newborns who survive abortion, which is congressional Republicans’ current pro-life legislative priority.

However, last May he also voted for the so-called Equality Act, a broad pro-LGBT bill whose provisions would have also imperiled the rights of health workers who object to participating in abortion. Lipinski pointed to a failed amendment he introduced that would have limited the bill’s application to abortion, but ultimately voted for the un-amended version.

Lipinski was a fish out of water. Pelosi, should she survive as House Speaker, will be happy with Newman, who was no doubt pleased that Pelosi, who likes to hide behind her Catholicism when convenient, pushed to include abortion protections in the coronavirus relief bill, a move roundly condemned by GOP Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska:

Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Democrats for reportedly trying to ensure federal funding for abortion as part of the coronavirus economic stimulus plan.

“While schools are closing and hospitals are gearing up, Speaker Pelosi is waging unnecessary culture wars. Speaker Pelosi should be fighting the coronavirus pandemic, not politicizing emergency funding by fighting against the bipartisan Hyde Amendment,” Sasse told National Review in a statement. “We need to be ramping up our diagnostic testing, not waging culture wars at the behest of Planned Parenthood. Good grief.”

Pelosi attempted to secure a funding stream of up to $1 billion for reimbursing laboratory claims. According to White House officials who spoke with the Daily Caller, that provision would establish a precedent under which health claims for all procedures, including abortion, could be reimbursed with federal funds. That precedent would render the Hyde Amendment, which blocks taxpayer funding for abortion clinics, obsolete.

Not to be outdone, Senate minority leader CHuck Schumer, while alleging coronavirus incompetence on the part of Trump possibly costing additional lives, left out the part about his Senate Democrats blocking passage of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act to save infants who survive an abortion.

In the party of death, Dan Lipinski will not be missed.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.