Hillary Clinton has called for ending the Hyde Amendment that prevents federal money from being used to fund abortions on Medicaid. From the Breitbart News story quoting a Clinton speech that aired C-Span. Sayeth Clinton (my emphasis):
I believe we need to protect access to safe and legal abortion, not just in principle, but in practice.
Any right that requires you to take measures to access it, is no right at all.
Not when patients and providers have to endure harassment and intimidation just to walk into a health center; not when making an appointment means taking time off from work, finding child care, and driving half-way across your state; not when providers are required by state law to recite misleading information to women in order to shame and scare them; and not as long as we have laws on the books like the Hyde Amendment, making it harder for low-income women to exercise their full rights.
Notice that Clinton has dumped the “rare” in the, “safe, legal, and rare” obfuscation phrase deployed by her husband’s administration.
Notice also that Clinton seeks to end a form of comity that keeps abortion legal but doesn’t force dissenting taxpayers to fund it.
Notice too that she appears to want women to receive paid time off from work to kill their fetus.
Clinton would establish abortion as a “positive right,” meaning access would be guaranteed to all women by the government–even if it requires coercion of the private sector, perhaps including doctors.
What’s going on? As I have written here and elsewhere, the idea of “pro-choice” is being eschewed as a pro-abortion movement is emerging.
What might be the difference between a pro-choice and pro-abortion movement?
- Pro-abortion activists want abortion available, free for every woman at any time.
- Pro-abortion activists want to stifle dissenting views–California now requires crisis pregnancy centers to advertise for abortion clinics.
- Pro-abortion activists want terminations available basically through the ninth month.
That would require overturning Roe v Wade, which explicitly allows some state regulation, allowing pro-lifers to crack and chip the abortion behemoth for decades, with more cases before the Supreme Court this term. (Roe was intended to end the abortion debate but failed in that quest.)
If Clinton is elected POTUS, she will appoint Supreme Court justices who agree with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, that the proper protection of abortion isn’t so much privacy, but equal protection.
Such a ruling would make the right to abortion absolute. I believe there are already 4 votes on SCOTUS for such a ruling.
Read what Clinton said again carefully. She is calling for a constitutional guarantee to unfettered abortion, at any time for any reason, no meaningful dissent or legal resistance allowed.
If that happens, it will really tear the country apart.