If you're pro-life, Democrats don't want you. They said as much late last month.
"Every candidate who runs as a Democrat should [share the Democratic Party's position on abortion] because every woman should be able to make her own health choices," new Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said. "Period."
Elsewhere, he added, "Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state."
Abortion in her words
Four women from the Chattanooga area tell their stories about terminating unwanted pregnancies.
The party's position on abortion really hasn't changed - they're for it, whenever needed - but the tolerance in the party for anyone who believes life is sacred in the first two trimesters of life in the womb, where abortion is legal in many states, has narrowed significantly.
For some, such as a huge abortion supporter like U.S. House Minority Leader like Rep. Nancy Pelosi, that's troubling.
To Perez's remarks, she said "of course" it is possible to be both pro-life and a Democrat. "I have served many years in Congress with members who have not shared my very positive, my family would say aggressive, position on promoting a woman's right to choose," she said.
Pelosi, of course, was attempting to give a nod to her Catholic faith, which opposes abortion, and those voters of hers and others who adhere to the faith.
But, in the years of former President Obama, who famously spoke in favor of late-semester abortions as an Illinois state senator, the noose has tightened against pro-life Democrats.
At the party's 2012 national convention, Democrats declared they wanted their abortions "safe, legal and rare," a phrase previously employed by once and future presidential contender Hillary Clinton.
But in 2016, with Clinton as their nominee, they - for the first time in the party platform - called for repealing the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds for most abortions, and the Helms Amendment, which prohibits foreign aid from funding abortions. And the candidate herself, in her third debate with now-President Donald Trump, defended abortion even "toward the end of their pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions."
Perez himself, in a tweet, amended "safe, legal and rare" to "safe, legal and accessible."
Nervous Democrats, aware of the change in tone toward the procedure, have wondered if the party has gone too far.
"Every single speaker talked about abortion," commentator Cokie Roberts said on ABC News, referring to the 2012 convention, "and, you know, at some point, you start to alienate people. Thirty percent of Democrats are pro-life."
"Pro-life Democrats have never felt as isolated as they do after this week," Michael Wear, an adviser to Obama on faith outreach, said after Perez's recent remarks.
"My concern," said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, "is that if we impose these purity tests that we will purify ourselves into irrelevance, and we will purify our party to the point where we can only win elections in states that touch salt water."
The incident over which Perez made his recent comments came when he and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., were preparing to descend on Omaha, Neb., to campaign for Catholic Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello, who has supported a 20-week abortion ban and restrictions on the extent of the use of telemedicine in abortion counseling.
"[W]e have got to appreciate where people come from," Sanders said, "and do our best to fight for the pro-choice agenda. But I think you just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue."
Perez, who initially enthusiastically supported Mello in a desire to help all Democrats "cross the finish line and win," heard about that support from the party's far-left base, which faulted him for not having ideological purity. So he doubled down on abortion.
"I fundamentally disagree with Heath Mello's personal beliefs about women's reproductive health," he said. A day later, he added, "If [pro-life Democrats] try to legislate or govern that way, we will take them on."
Only time will tell if the 2016 presidential election results were solely Trumpian in scope or whether the Obama-led leftward movement of the party - including the purity on abortion - were akin to the rightward movement of voters.
Pro-life Democrats' take on the abortion, after all, is more in line with Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who responded to Perez's Twitter biography statement of "fighting for the little guy" with a question about whether he'd support "this little fella," a color photo he included of an unborn 12-week-old boy.
Our guess is the party will continue to pay lip service to those Democrats who believe life in the womb is sacred, but it's not going back - at least not anytime soon. The party is stuck on the fringe left, and any alteration now would alienate that base.