At a campaign rally at Southern New Hampshire University where she officially accepted the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, Hillary Clinton called for an end to the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal taxpayer funding for abortion on demand.
“I will always defend Planned Parenthood,” Clinton said Sunday from prepared remarks. “And I will say – consistently and proudly – Planned Parenthood should be funded, supported, and appreciated; not undermined, misrepresented, and demonized.”
The Democrat 2016 contender continued:
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.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, responded to Clinton’s call for taxpayer funding of elective abortion.
“Not only is she opposed to defunding Planned Parenthood, Hillary Clinton has now argued that taxpayers have an obligation to support abortion at any time, for any reason,” she said in a statement. “This is the most dramatic pro-abortion position espoused by a leading political figure to date, and it changes the abortion debate. ‘Safe, legal, and rare,’ is long gone.”
“As many as seven in ten Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion – including majorities of young people and women,” Dannenfelser added. “If Mrs. Clinton wants to use this election to go to war against this longtime consensus, we welcome the opportunity to engage and expose her. We are confident the American people will reject this level of extremism at the ballot box.”
Planned Parenthood’s historic endorsement of a candidate in a primary comes as the organization is under investigation by several congressional committees for possible criminal activity, as seen in a series of videos exposing the abortion business’ apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies and altering the position of babies during abortions to harvest the most intact organs.
Expressing concern about the pro-life stance of the GOP presidential candidates, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told WMUR News why the abortion business decided to endorse a primary candidate:
Our supporters and millions of people around the country are extremely focused on this election, earlier than ever before. And, I think that, in large part, it’s because there are so many folks running for president on the Republican side who have pledged to undo decades of progress for women in America and so folks are ready to get going, and Secretary Clinton is such a champion, not only for Planned Parenthood, but for women and women’s rights, equal pay, all issues that Planned Parenthood has fought for more than 100 years.
Richards’ daughter, Lily Adams, also serves as Clinton’s Iowa communications director and previously worked in a deputy communications role for the Democratic National Committee.
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