Now some of you may be thinking that I'm about to share an incident where some good Republicans from my red home state of Kansas took exception with my role as an Obama delegate. But that isn’t what I’m going to talk about at all. Although I’ve had a bit of ribbing from some Republican friends, for the most part I have not experienced any negative repercussions from my more conservative neighbors. My tyranny of the majority experience came from within the party itself.

Two weeks ago I was enjoying a mini-vacation with my teenaged daughters. We thoroughly enjoy the Shakespeare Festival in Boulder and try to attend every summer. We were making this summer’s trek out to Boulder. Having recently seen Mamma Mia!, the girls had discovered Abba and we had purchased a cd to listen to on the trip. We were driving along I-70, singing along to “Take a Chance on Me” and having a marvelous time when out of the blue my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. We paused the cd and I answered. The call was from a pro-choice group that was recruiting my pledge, as an Obama delegate, so that the overwhelming message from the convention would be that the Democratic Party stands firm on this issue.

I was annoyed. First, because the call had interrupted a precious family moment (and since my oldest would be leaving for college a mere week later, those family moments were becoming more and more precious to me by the day). Second, because the caller, although perfectly polite, was in a very real way trying to exert pressure, trying to make sure I would conform. Of course now we all know that Senator Joe Biden is the Vice Presidential running mate. But at the time I received the call, we didn’t know that. A personally pro-life governor from Virginia, Tim Kaine, was being vetted for the position. Why would I, as a delegate, want to shout down his view at the convention? I’m happy with the choice of Biden for the ticket, but I saw some appeal to a Obama/Kaine ticket as well. I rather liked the idea of a ticket pro-choice on public policy, but sympathetic to the commitments to life held by individuals within the party. I’m tired of a single issue deciding elections when there are so many other issues that should be addressed. Abortion is not the only moral issue of the day. Torturing enemy combatants, the health care crisis, the war in Iraq, and countless other issues are, for me, important moral issues. I would prefer that Americans could discuss the moral dilemma of abortion without it overshadowing all these other questions. Intimidating the pro-life contingency of my party doesn’t strike me as a good start to that conversation.

I told the caller I was on a family vacation and didn’t wish to speak with them at that time. They called back a few days later, and when they did I refused to lend my name to their petition. I reminded them that Governor Kaine, a VP hopeful, was but one member of our party who, as a governor is committed to enforcing the law, yet considers himself personally pro-life. I know Democratic state representatives in Kansas who share that same position. I want the convention, indeed I want the party, to be a place where pro-choice and pro-life perspectives can be heard. On so many issues Democrats express a pro-life philosophy. We support public policies rooted in our compassion for people, our concern for the poor, the disaffected, the voiceless, the hurting in our own country and the hurting abroad. Those positions are fundamentally, pro-people, pro-life. That’s an important part of why I am a Democrat. Most of the Democrats I know are not pro-abortion. They prefer policies that make abortion unnecessary rather than illegal.

It will be insightful over the next week to see whether I observe other evidence of the tyranny of the majority within my own party. I suspect Senator McCain has become a victim of it himself, the former “maverick” now touting the party line in ways most of us don’t recognize from the persona he brandished a few months ago. It is difficult to stand firm in your own beliefs. The farther we step out into the public arena, the louder the voices of the “majority” who put us there. Yet, as Tocqueville reminds us, each individual needs the psychological space to listen to the voice of conscience in her heart, and she deserves the political freedom to express that conscience.