Did Hillary Clinton Just Say the Whole Abortion Industry Should Be Investigated? (Great!)

Hillary has spent most of the last couple of years not responding to questions from the media about actual controversies of the day, and the media never ask Democrats embarrassing abortion questions. So, she may not have been very prepared for this, but her answer to a question about the Planned Parenthood video scandal from the New Hampshire Union Leader is . . . surprising:

Calling them “disturbing,” Hillary Clinton said undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of aborted fetal tissue raise questions about the process nationwide.

“I have seen pictures from them and obviously find them disturbing,” the Democratic presidential hopeful said during a sit-down interview Tuesday with the New Hampshire Union Leader.

“Planned Parenthood is answering questions and will continue to answer questions. I think there are two points to make,” Clinton said. “One, Planned Parenthood for more than a century has done a lot of really good work for women: cancer screenings, family planning, all kinds of health services. And this raises not questions about Planned Parenthood so much as it raises questions about the whole process, that is, not just involving Planned Parenthood, but many institutions in our country.”

“And if there’s going to be any kind of congressional inquiry, it should look at everything and not just one (organization),” she said.

One possible read of the last line is that a weird attempt to run to Planned Parenthood’s side — it has political clout, small-time abortion providers do not. 

But what does she mean by ”this raises not questions about Planned Parenthood so much as it raises questions about the whole process, that is, not just involving Planned Parenthood, but many institutions in our country”? The Obama administration has said it’s not interested in an investigation, and the almost uniform reaction from the left has been that the video scandal does not raise questions about Planned Parenthood, abortion, laws about fetal organ donations, or anything else.

Clinton has spent the last couple months staking out aggressively liberal positions on issues where liberals feel confident, sometimes with good reason, that they have a winning political case — gay marriage, race issues, immigration, CEO pay and taxes, etc.. Democrats are probably not so confident that their extreme position on abortion is a winning one these days politically — for good reason. So is this a calculated concession? That would be an interesting development, though it still seems more likely that she just misspoke and will pay her penance to the church of Planned Parenthood soon enough.