Hillary’s Sisterhood With Planned Parenthood The endorsement of the nation’s largest abortion provider didn’t come free.By William McGurn
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillarys-sisterhood-with-planned-parenthood-1453161836
Once upon a time, in the good old days of the first Clinton presidency, Bill Clinton turned his back on his wife. He did so after her crash-and-burn on HillaryCare helped usher in the first Republican House in 40 years. Mr. Clinton got the message and went on to embrace welfare reform, sign a cut in the capital-gains tax, and even declare that “the era of big Government is over.”
Now his wife is returning the favor. Today Hillary Clinton is running hard against the agenda that defined her husband’s presidency. And not only his economics.
This campaign she has cast aside her husband’s formula on abortion—“safe, legal and rare”—that she herself ran on in the past. Gone is the moderating nuance of yesteryear: reducing the number of abortions, finding “common ground” with pro-lifers, even, in her first campaign for the Senate in 2000, how she would be OK with a limit on partial-birth or late-term abortions so long as it didn’t threaten the life of the mother.
The new Mrs. Clinton has moved to the absolutist position of the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. Today Mrs. Clinton’s formula is safe, legal, unlimited—and federally subsidized. We saw this new Hillary Clinton at a Planned Parenthood rally in New Hampshire this month, where she said she favored “safe and legal abortion” and denounced the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion.
“I will always defend Planned Parenthood and I will say consistently and proudly, Planned Parenthood should be funded, supported and protected, not undermined, misrepresented and demonized,” Mrs. Clinton said. In return, Planned Parenthood rewarded her with the first presidential primary endorsement in its 100-year history.
Amy Chozick of the New York Times recently described the relationship this way: “the Clinton campaign has functioned almost as a marketing arm for Planned Parenthood.” Remember, this is an organization that reports performing 323,999 abortions and taking in $553.7 million in subsidies from Uncle Sam in fiscal year 2014-15. Though these tax dollars are not earmarked for abortion, money is fungible.
It’s a curious reversal. For one thing, Mrs. Clinton’s shift comes at a moment when even some pro-choice advocates admit to queasiness over Planned Parenthood after undercover videos were released last year showing its officials sipping wine as they chat about prices for, say, an intact fetal heart. The pro-choice community also includes those who support abortion rights but do not believe either Planned Parenthood or abortion should be subsidized with tax dollars.
It’s also a big shift from last July, when Mrs. Clinton repeated her safe, legal and rare formula to the New Hampshire Union Leader and said she found the Planned Parenthood videos “disturbing.” But plainly not so disturbing that she would let it get in the way of the $20 million Planned Parenthood will spend this election cycle.
It’s hard to overstate how extreme Mrs. Clinton’s new position is. Polls consistently show that while most Americans do not want to outlaw abortion, they do want limits. This is why Democrats like to deny they are for abortion on demand— Nancy Pelosi just made this incredible claim to a Roll Call reporter—even as they fight any proposed restriction.
Planned Parenthood fights them all. It fights restrictions on partial-birth abortions. It fights consent laws requiring that a minor’s mom or dad be notified before she has an abortion. It has even opposed efforts to prevent an abortion in a case where the fetus is a girl and the mom or dad prefers a boy.
In fairness, Mrs. Clinton is following a trail blazed by Barack Obama, an absolutist from the get-go. As an Illinois state senator, he famously voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. As president, he made clear he would rather have the federal government shut down than agree to a GOP proposal to redirect Planned Parenthood’s funding to community health organizations that do not perform abortions.
In any case here we are. When Carly Fiorina brought up the Planned Parenthood tapes at the second Republican debate in mid-September, it was news for weeks. In the first Republican debate, Megyn Kelly of Fox News asked Gov. Scott Walker about his support for a Wisconsin anti-abortion law that has no exceptions for cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. “Would you really let a mother die rather than have an abortion?” she asked.
Fair enough. But abortion has gone largely unmentioned in the Democratic debates. Is there no debate moderator who might ask Mrs. Clinton to explain why she’s dropped “rare” in favor of taxpayer-financed abortion on demand?
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