Yes, the DNC changed their abortion platform - they made it worse.

One doesn't have to go far in the current abortion debates to find people using the Democratic National Committee's "new language" on the topic of choice as a justification for claiming that the DNC is pro-life "in its totality" or something along those lines.

Well, I decided to read the DNC's platform and confirmed that, yes, they have new language ...

... and it's worse than what they had before.

Even John Kerry's "moderated 2004 platform included a plank stating that the party sought to keep abortion legal, but make it "rare", a formulation of the Pres. Bill Clinton era." (source)

The word "rare" has been eliminated from the 2008 platform, and its place, these chilling words added:

"The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe V. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right."

Richard Land correctly notes that "These words taken together are about as inclusive an assertion of an absolute right to abortion as the English language is capable of mustering."

He also points out "No wonder that NARAL Pro-Choice America rhapsodized that the new platform language reaffirmed “in the strongest of terms” the “Democratic Party’s solid commitment to a woman’s right to choose.”

(Radical feminists are happy, too: "I'm personally really excited to see them mention the ability to pay, since the Hyde Amendment has been such a huge barrier for low-income women and women of color. This is more progressive than I might have expected.")

Simply put: you can't be more pro-abortion than the language of the DNC official platform.

"But wait!" people will reply, "... what about the subsequent language claiming that health care and education will help reduce the need for abortions?"

Sure, that is in there, too. But that's not the argument that gets thrown around: what people actually claim is that the DNC's new platform is more "moderate" on abortion, even "more pro-life." But in fact, if words mean anything, the DNC has actually "accomplished the impossible: they have moved to the left on abortion", in the words of Naomi Riley.

Nor can I be assuaged by the DNC proposal to reduce abortions through better "health care" and "education".

For by education the DNC means concretely their vision of "sex education", which often is reduced to instruction in "safe sex" practices which promote attitudes conducive to more, not less, unwanted pregnancies, and simultaneously the distribution of condoms and other contraceptives, which are inherently offensive to Catholic sensibilities and against Catholic teaching.

Furthermore, these "education" initiatives frequently resist letting women receive the type of education that includes, for instance, ultrasounds of their growing infants (see picture above).

My question, then: how exactly has "lack of education" been a constitutive cause of abortions in America? And how possibly could their proposed "educational initiatives" significantly reduce them?

Finally, the argument that the DNC is more against abortion than ever before because they wish to reduce the economic occasions for abortion is also a red herring in my opinion. To paraphrase Richard Garnett, we must not settle "merely for trying to put in a better economic position those who hold the fate of the defenseless in their hands."

My question, then: is not the actual intention of the DNC to make all abortions simply chosen, instead of chosen in a pressured way? How will removing one source of pressure eliminate the many pressures (most of which are non-economic) that help drive women to abortion?

Thus, by removing even the concession of desiring to make abortions "rare", the DNC has once-again presumed upon the support of moderates and actively sought to court the vote of radicals who will never allow the practice of abortion (and related horrors) to be exterminated.

Now if you've read this far, I'm going to reward you with a gutsy claim: I think it's exactly this attitude evidenced by those who try to endlessly defend the DNC's liberal abortion agenda who have allowed the DNC to backtrack on their previous concessions (= comparatively-moderate positions).

Imagine the DNC is a large ocean liner. One one side, a strong tugboat is trying as hard as it can to push the DNC towards unequivocal and ossified support for abortion rights. On the other side is a tired, rusted tugboat barely resisting the opposite force, and trying to convince itself that it's winning the fight until it has almost run aground.

Sadly, the strong tugboat represents the pro-abortion forces in the democratic party, and the tired, rusted tugboat represents the pro-life forces.

C'mon little tugboat, try pushing for a change.