3 Reasons Hillary Clinton Is a Pro-Abortion Extremist
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton positioned herself as a moderate on abortion for much of her career, but now holds the most extreme positions on abortion of any presidential candidate ever.
Here are three reasons why:
1. She wants taxpayers to pay for abortion.
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Clinton supports government funding for abortion. On June 10, Clinton delivered a speech at a Planned Parenthood event in which she called for repealing the Hyde Amendment, a policy that prevents taxpayer funding for abortion.
"Let's repeal laws like the Hyde Amendment that make it nearly impossible ... for low-income women, disproportionately women of color, to exercise their full reproductive rights," she said.
The Democratic National Committee added this goal to its platform after Clinton became the nominee.
An August YouGov poll found that 55 percent of Americans support the Hyde Amendment. This includes a large number of Democrats, who are about evenly divided. Forty-one percent of Democrats support the ban on abortion funding while 44 percent oppose it, which is within the poll's margin of error (4.8 percentage points for the full sample).
2. She supports abortion until birth.
Clinton supports abortion up until the moment of birth.
She doesn't say it exactly like that, of course, because it sounds awful when you say a baby can be legally killed right before she's born. Instead, Clinton uses some shifty Clintonian lingo.
Clinton has said she supports restrictions only in the third trimester and only if there are exceptions for the "life and health of the mother." (In one interview she said there should only be restrictions at the "very end of the third trimester.") But as Clinton understands, and most voters don't, the "health exception" is just a huge loophole that allows for abortion for any reason.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade, that the health exception can be whatever the abortionist decides it is.
An abortionist's "medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age — relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health," the court decided.
So, when Clinton says she'll only support abortion restrictions in the third trimester if there is a health exception, she is effectually saying there should be no restrictions on abortion through the entire pregnancy. She admits this when pressed on the issue.
In an April appearance on ABC's "The View," Clinton was asked if she supports legal abortion "just hours before delivery," and she agreed. That same week, on NBC's "Meet the Press," she was asked, "when or if does an unborn child have constitutional rights?" She answered, "the unborn person doesn't have constitutional rights."
A July 16 Marist poll found that only 13 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal "through the entire pregnancy." Similarly, a 2012 Gallup poll found only 14 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal "in the last three months of pregnancy," and a July 2014 HuffPost/YouGov poll found that 59 percent of Americans support a ban on abortions after 20-weeks of gestation, which is during the second trimester.
3. She thinks abortion should be common, not rare.
Clinton no longer argues that abortion should be rare.
During his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton's husband, Bill, said that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." It was controversial at the time within the pro-choice community because saying that abortion should be "rare" implies that there is something wrong with getting an abortion. (What could that be?) But the phrase helped establish Bill Clinton's public image as a moderate on abortion.
Hillary Clinton also used the phrase "safe, legal and rare" to describe her abortion position when she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000 and when she ran for president in 2008. During her current run for president, however, she dropped "rare" from her vocabulary on abortion.
In July 2015, after undercover videos showed how Planned Parenthood benefits from selling aborted baby parts, Clinton initially called the images "disturbing." She changed her tune quickly, however.
Six days after those remarks, Clinton's campaign released a video, "Support and Stand with Planned Parenthood," expressing her support for the abortion provider. She accused Republicans of launching a "full-on assault on women's health" and claimed that Planned Parenthood provides "life-saving preventive care."
In the pro-Planned Parenthood video, she talked about "safe and legal" abortion. No "rare."
In a February interview on ABC's "This Week," she even claimed that her "record for many years about where I stand on abortion" was that it "should be safe and legal."
What about rare? That was her position also.
"I have the same position that I've had for a very long time," Clinton added.
After backtracking on saying the selling of baby body parts is disturbing, Planned Parenthood would reward her for becoming more stridently pro-abortion. On Jan. 7, Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed Clinton, the first time the organization has ever endorsed a presidential candidate in a nomination contest, even though her main rival, Bernie Sanders, is also pro-choice.
Three days after that, Clinton delivered the speech at a Planned Parenthood event referenced above in which she called for taxpayer funding for abortion.
It was the first time Clinton had publicly called for the government to pay for abortions, but five days later, in an interview with Fusion, she claimed that had been her position "for years."
Though Fusion is ostensibly a news organization, the interview comes across more like a slick ad campaign for Clinton. (Owned by Univision, Fusion's target audience is young English-speaking Latinos.)
In the same interview, she again used the phrase "safe and legal" without using the word "rare." She also said she would like Planned Parenthood to "get even more [government] funding" because "the need is only going to grow."
As she said those words, Fusion displayed a graphic saying, "1 in 4 women are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term because they can't afford an abortion without insurance."
The message is clear: abortion should be more common, not rare, by forcing us all to pay for it, through direct government funding or by requiring our insurance providers to pay for it.
While a slight majority, 53 percent, of Americans don't want Roe v. Wade to be overturned, a plurality are not comfortable with women choosing to have an abortion. Forty-nine percent say abortion is morally wrong, while only 15 percent say abortion is morally acceptable and 23 percent say abortion isn't a moral issue.
Some Clinton supporters think she's a moderate on abortion. They haven't been paying attention.
