God and Hillary Clinton (24 page)

As for Mrs. Clinton, her conscience has not been affected enough to switch her vote on the issue. In October 2003, Hillary joined a minority of senators in a final vote against the ban on partial-birth abortion, and this time the ban was not vetoed by the president—as the president was George W. Bush, not Bill Clinton.
²²

Because of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton's adamant position that mothers should not be criminalized for abortions, it is worth noting that the partial-birth abortion ban issues fines and up to two years in prison for those who perform the procedure, while stating unequivocally that the women who receive the procedure are not criminally liable.

The Slippery Slope of Marriage Rights

In 2003, another issue tied to religious values came to the forefront of Americans' minds, when Hillary introduced a bill in Congress that would give homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexual couples, a move that some conservatives, including the editorial board of the
Washington Times
, complained would merely provide momentum to efforts designed to legalize gay marriage, an assertion that Mrs. Clinton rejected.
²³

In the
New York Post
, Deborah Orin charged that suddenly a lot of Democrats, starting with Senator Clinton, were “desperately seeking” a “don't ask, don't tell” policy on the subject of gay marriage. Orin said this included Mrs. Clinton's husband, the ex-president. Orin reported that Bill Clinton's office would not say whether he still backed the Defense of Marriage Act he signed into law in 1996. According to Orin's reportage, Hillary herself, who during her Senate campaign had been very clear in her stance on the issue of gay marriage, suddenly was unwilling to weigh in on the Defense of Marriage Act. Orin quoted Hillary spokeswoman Karen Dunn, who said, “This issue is in a state of evolution.”
²⁴

What was going on? That question was pondered by Andrew Sullivan, the former
New Republic
editor and probably the country's most outspoken gay conservative. “[I]t's no surprise to hear her complete non-answer on the question of same-sex marriage,” wrote Sullivan in the
New York Sun
.
²⁵
He pointed to the following exchange from a June 18 interview with Mrs. Clinton on the Brian Lehrer WNYC show in New York City:

Her words almost suggest (but not necessarily) that if the public changed its attitude on the issue, she would follow suit. On the other hand, her words seem to make clear her continuing commitment to the idea that marriage in America should be legally restricted to a man and a woman.

On this issue, perhaps more than any other, the malleability of Hillary's religious values was apparent. Since 1996, she had acted and spoken in support of the Defense of Marriage Act many times, but as the Democratic Party shifted and gay marriage became an issue that more mainstream members of the party were taking up, Hillary was no longer arguing against it with the determination that once defined her position. Though in the 1990s and during her campaign she had drawn a clear link between her opposition to the issue and her religious and moral definitions of marriage, she found herself hesitating as the political culture that produced that bipartisan bill began to
erode. She was no longer arguing in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act with the diligence and consistency she once possessed; on the contrary, she appeared to be leaning toward it. While it was debatable whether the legislation she introduced would have amounted to paving the way for same-sex marriage, it was evident from her ambiguous stance on the issue that her formerly entrenched position might be shifting.

Rather than sticking to the beliefs that she had professed three years prior, she was perhaps beginning to hedge her ideas to coincide with the turning tide of her party.

Keynote Address to NARAL

On January 22, 2004, Mrs. Clinton gave the keynote address at the NARAL dinner celebrating the thirty-first anniversary of
Roe v. Wade
. As the most vitriolic, inflammatory speech she has given on the subject, the speech will no doubt be one of Hillary's larger hurdles in positioning herself as a moderate, religious Democrat. She described pro-lifers—the “anti-choice” people—as plotting behind closed doors, using “foot soldiers” to quietly plan the overthrow of the right to an abortion. This was merely step one, said the senator, in an insidious plot to strip a panorama of rights. She began:

She then addressed several questions, all revealing her stridency on the issue. For example, she focused on abortion stances by “anti-choice forces” that “seem reasonable,” but, in her view, are not. Among them, she noted, “It's a crime to harm a pregnant woman, so it should be a crime to harm the fetus, as well. Right?…We even believe in protecting the rights of doctors and nurses to act on their conscience in deciding what medical procedures to perform.” She warned, “We should be careful in our complacency. Many of these policies sound perfectly reasonable to the untrained ear. But they are not reasonable when you realize the true intention—which is not to protect fetuses from crime, to expand access to prenatal care, to involve parents more thoroughly in their children's medical decisions, or to protect the civil rights of medical professionals. These policies are meant to chip away at
all
reproductive rights.”

She then addressed another component in the abortion debate: the use of federal tax dollars to pay for abortions: “Anti-choice forces also argue that our tax dollars should not pay for abortion under any cir
cumstances,” said Mrs. Clinton. “On the surface, this argument also sounds reasonable. But by imposing this ban, Congress has denied access to a legal procedure for women who depend on the government for their healthcare—poor women, women in the military stationed overseas, Native American women, women in prison, federal employees, Peace Corps volunteers. These women are unable to make this deeply personal, most intimate decision even if they believe, and their doctors determine, it is in their best interest.”

Senator Clinton not only made clear that Americans deeply opposed to abortion should hand over their tax dollars to pay for abortions, but portrayed these conscientious objectors as cruel, even bigoted toward poor and Native American women. Bringing class economics into the equation, she went on: “We have gone back in time to an era where the ‘Haves' have a choice and the ‘Have nots' are forced to rely on dangerous, if not illegal, procedures.”

At this point in the speech, Mrs. Clinton let her emotions get the best of her and launched into an extreme assertion that pro-lifers were seeking to end “all rights of privacy.” She stated:

Though she was speaking to a receptive audience, these sweeping generalizations were extreme—even for Hillary. She did not provide examples, and in the months and years ahead she would find herself hard-pressed to account for the claim that pro-lifers seek to scrap “all” rights to privacy.

The speech continued to plummet downhill, descending into zealotry, as she began claiming that these same anti-choice forces—many of which, obviously, are scientists, doctors, medical professionals, people with doctorates and various other professional degrees—were opposed to both society and progress. Mrs. Clinton asserted:

That last line on reinterpreting the Constitution particularly angered pro-lifers, since, as everyone knows, including the most sympathetic pro-choice law professors, the right to an abortion had to be read into the Constitution, at the expense and total exclusion of sections guaranteeing a right to life, such as the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life.” To the contrary, abortion was read into the “right to privacy,” three words that themselves do not exist in the Constitution.
²⁷
While Hillary must surely recognize these crucial constitutional facts, she overlooks them when seeking to rally her pro-choice base.

Mrs. Clinton continued this thought by angrily asserting, “What is so stunning to me is that these advocates of greater government power and reduced personal freedom can turn around and claim to be members of a political party that is supposed to favor a limited
government—and they can do it with a straight face. We cannot and should not amend the Constitution to deny people freedom.” Here, too, pro-lifers objected to her words; they believe that by denying women the “freedom” to have an abortion, they simultaneously preserve a more important, fundamental, and overriding freedom: the right to be born, the right to life. However, in this speech, Hillary did not entertain these distinctions. It was not a thoughtful speech; it assumed that “anti-choicers” were stupid, even vulgar, fascistic. The address demonized pro-lifers, and her audience loved it.

As she reached the crescendo of her address, Senator Clinton took her concerns global, warning her listeners: “This…has consequence for us, and for people around the globe. Think again about the beliefs of our opponents and its impact on reproductive rights.” America's current leaders, said Mrs. Clinton, in a reference to the current Bush administration, were seeking to impose a “global gag rule” and “to close [reproductive] clinics and cut [reproductive] services” around the world. “These changes,” she assured, “are wreaking havoc on women's lives.” She gave examples from Kenya, Zambia, and Ethiopia. She again assailed the anti-choicers—for their intransigence, their fanaticism: