Usually associated with social conservatives and the Republican Party, the pro-life movement is gaining new ground among Democrats who want to make America a two-pro-life party system.

“We really need pro-life Democrats,” Kristen Day, president of Democrats for Life of America, told WoW. “Without having a pro-life majority, we’re not going to get anything done.”

According to Day, who wrote the book Democrats for Life: Pro-life Politics and the Silenced Majority, the Democratic Party has not always been staunchly pro-abortion. Twenty-five years ago, Democrats held a majority in the House with 125 of their 292 seats belonging to pro-life Democrats. The party’s pro-abortion position developed gradually as abortion-rights activists used what they had learned in the anti-war campaign to change the party platform.

Day said for the first time in 2007, the Democratic Party lent its full support to pro-life candidates, and the number of pro-life Democrats in the House and Senate increased for the first time in 25 years. There are seven pro-life Democrats in the House. Pro-life Democratic Senators include Bob Casey, Jr. and Harry Reid, Senate Democratic leader. In 2008, pro-life Democrats in Colorado and Minnesota will present pro-life language at local caucuses with the hopes of changing the party platform –a goal Day admits will be difficult to accomplish.

“There is still a sense out there that you can’t trust pro-life democrats,” Day told WoW. “If you go to a local caucus meeting and you say that you’re pro-life, people have been told not to come back. People don’t think they’re really Democrats.”

For Day, a pro-life stance is part and parcel of the Democrats’ human rights’ legacy. “The Democratic Party is very good on most of the life issues, human rights, death penalty, wages adequate for families to have enough food to eat,” Day said. “This is the next big fight that we can win, the battle for the unborn and providing civil rights for the unborn.”