Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign staff are dodging questions about whether she would support any limits on abortion whatsoever. Clinton’s dodging the issue of late-term abortions comes on the heels of the head of the Democratic Party saying she wouldn’t support any limits on abortions.
The Weekly Standard has attempted to get the Clinton campaign to provide clarification on whether Clinton would support any abortion limits.
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is dodging a key question in the abortion debate: Under what circumstances should late-term abortion be legal?
Every declared or likely Republican presidential candidate has expressed support for legislation that would ban most abortions later than 20 weeks after conception–or 5 months into pregnancy–when infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely. But Hillary Clinton and her spokesman have declined to spell out Clinton’s position on late-term abortion.
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In 2005, Hillary Clinton said that “government should have no role” in limiting the right to abortion–a remark very similar to the one made by Wasserman Schultz this week. “This decision, which is one of the most fundamental, difficult, and soul-searching decisions a woman and a family can make, is also one in which the government should have no role,” Clinton said at the time.
But at other times, Clinton has claimed that she’d be willing to support a ban on late-term abortion. “I have said many times that I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected,” Clinton said in a 2000 New York senatorial debate.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD emailed Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill to get answers to these questions on Wednesday afternoon. But 48 hours later, Clinton’s spokesman, who has responded to questions from TWS in the past, still has not replied.
Hillary Clinton has a long history of pushing abortion, even on a global scale.
Most recently, Hillary Clinton pushed abortion at a fundraising event in March. One year to the date after she received an award from the radical pro-abortion group Emily’s List, likely presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave the keynote address last night at a fundraiser for the organization.
Clinton’s speech came at the Emily’s List 30th Anniversary Conference and Gala in Washington, D.C. and she applauded the work of the abortion activists, who strongly support taxpayer funding of abortions and strongly oppose banning late-term abortions.
“When I look at this room, I see leaders,” Clinton said, encouraging the pro-abortion activists gathered to redouble their efforts.
Last year, Clinton said that to be pro-woman is to be pro-abortion. Clinton, at a pro-Braley rally, told voters in Iowa, “It’s not enough to be a woman, you have to be committed to expand rights and opportunities for all women.” Because Joni Ernst (who defeated Braley) thinks unborn babies should be protected, she isn’t committed to expanding rights and opportunities for women?
National Right to Life’s Carol Tobias said in response: “Pro-abortion advocates like to say abortion is a woman’s issue, but only pro-abortion women should voice their opinions. Indeed, they come very close to saying it is illegitimate for a woman who is pro-life to speak on abortion. The voices of pro-life women just don’t count. The hypocrisy, or should I say the gall, of people who think you have to want to kill unborn children in order to be pro-woman is stunning.”
Meanwhile, Clinton launched a new partnership with the Gates Foundation, that supports abortion. The Gates Foundation operated by Bill and Melinda Gates supports abortion and the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
Clinton says she admires Margaret Sanger, the racist founder of the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
In her role as Secretary of State Clinton pressed for abortion on an international scale. As recently as June 2012, she was upset the document the United Nations adopted at its Rio+20 conference did not promote abortion by inserting terms like “reproductive rights” into he language of the text.
A diverse group of countries rallied together with the Holy See to successfully remove any mention of reproductive rights or population control from the final outcome document produced during the last round of UN negotiations at the Rio +20 conference. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA), along with Norway and Iceland, and Catholics for Choice and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, worked feverishly to take advantage of the Rio +20 conference on sustainable development in order to promote both an international right to abortion and population control.
However, nations like Nicaragua, Chile, Russia, Honduras, Syria, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Egypt all rejected the introductionof “reproductive rights” into the Rio +20 outcome document.
Responding to the resounding defeat, Clinton said she was disappointed, according to a CNS News report.
“While I am very pleased that this year’s outcome document endorses sexual and reproductive health and universal access to family planning, to reach our goals in sustainable development we also have to ensure women’s reproductive rights,” she said. “Women must be empowered to make decisions about whether and when to have children. And the United States will continue – the United States will continue to work to ensure that those rights are respected in international agreements.”
Clinton personally urged Obama to veto a State Department funding bill over cuts to groups that perform and promote abortions.
In 2010, she testified before a Congressional committee where two pro-life members of Congress presented her with a long lecture on abortion and how it hurts women.
Congressmen Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, and Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican, both addressed pro-life issues during the hearing.
Smith, who had frequently led the fight against abortion on an international scale, made his full remarks with Clinton sitting as the lone witness at the witness table.
“Secretary Clinton, the most persecuted and at risk minority in the world today are unborn children,” Smith said. “Pregnancy is not a disease. The child in the womb is neither a tumor nor a parasite to be destroyed.”
Smith said he is troubled by President Barack Obama’s decision to overturn the Mexico City Policy and open the door forcing taxpayers to fund abortions in other nations.
“I am deeply concerned that with the elimination of the Mexico City Policy by executive order last year, NGO implementing partners may actively seek to integrate abortion with the many necessary and noble undertakings funded by the Global Health Initiative,” he said.
“I respectfully ask that the administration consider that for many of us, all abortion—legal or illegal—is violence against children and poses significant, often underappreciated risks to women and even to children later born to post-abortive women,” Smith added.
