The record proves this a lie. In the last 30 years, the right of a woman to choose abortion and other women’s rights have suffered as many blows under Democratic administrations as under Republican presidents.

In 1977 Democratic president James Carter signed into law the Hyde Amendment, the first major assault on the right to choose following the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision decriminalizing abortion. This reactionary piece of legislation shut off Medicaid funding for abortions. In the following two years 1.5 million women were unable to obtain an abortion because of a lack of facilities or an inability to pay. As a result of the Hyde Amendment, to a large degree, only 21 of the 50 U.S. states provide any funding for abortions today.

The Clinton-Gore 1992 presidential ticket’s position on abortion was that it should be “safe, legal, and rare.” This has been the mantra for John Kerry as well. Kerry adds that he is “personally pro-life,” the term used widely by the anti-choice movement.

On the 25th anniversary of Roe, Gore called for pro- and anti-choice forces to “work together on a common goal: reducing the number of abortions.”

During the Clinton presidency the number of U.S. counties with an abortion provider declined from 16 percent to 14 percent. Today it is 13 percent.

Under Clinton’s watch, Congress in 1999 extended the Hyde Amendment to ban Medicare funding for abortions. Hillary Clinton’s husband signed that into law. Medicare today covers nearly 700,000 disabled women of child-bearing age, many of whom have medical conditions in which carrying a pregnancy to term could cause serious complications, or even death.

Perhaps the greatest blow Clinton delivered to women’s rights was the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, in which he fulfilled his pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” This eliminated Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and cut off food stamps and Medicaid for many working people. The consequences of this law are especially devastating for the 10 million women raising children on their own.

Clinton’s eight-year broadside on women’s rights is often papered over by those who urge support for Democrats by citing his veto of bills attempting to ban certain late-term abortion procedures. At the same time, however, these liberals never mention how Clinton used even this veto to pave the way for the future passage of such bills.

Clinton said he vetoed the bills because they did not include exceptions for when the mother’s health is at risk. In December 1996, he said that if sponsors of the bill “will help me with language here and do it in good faith, I will happily sign this bill.”

There is one other related myth that needs to be debunked. A number of speakers at the massive April 25 rally in Washington, D.C., said that “the next president to appoint a Supreme Court justice must be John Kerry,” alleging that another high court judge appointed by a Republican president will mean the death of Roe v. Wade. Consider these facts, however: three of the seven judges in the Supreme Court that issued the Roe ruling had been appointed by Republican Richard Nixon, including Harold Blackmun who authored the majority opinion; five of the seven who formed the majority were Republican appointees; and one of the two dissenting votes in that decision was cast by a justice appointed by liberal icon John F. Kennedy.
 
 
Related articles:
Mass march in D.C. backs women’s right to choose
A woman’s right to choose  
 
 
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