Hillary Clinton has stepped in it again, and this time it has nothing to do with her e-mail antics. And the fire is not only coming from the Right. The newest kerfuffle in which the presidential candidate finds herself has to do with calling a “fetus” an “unborn person.” To the Left, this simple statement of biological — and logical — fact is nothing less than political heresy.
Speaking to host Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Clinton delivered the party line about the implications of Roe v. Wade, but flubbed her line and said:
The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights. Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t do everything we possibly can — in the vast majority of instances — to help a mother who is carrying a child and wants to make sure that child will be healthy, to have appropriate medical support. It doesn’t mean that, you don’t do everything possible to try to fulfill your obligations. But it does not include sacrificing the woman’s right to make decisions. And I think that’s an important distinction — that under Roe v. Wade — we’ve had enshrined under our Constitution.
This was immediately after she had told Todd, “My position is in line with Roe v. Wade, that women have a constitutional right to make these most intimate and personal and difficult decisions based on their conscience, their faith, their family, their doctor,” adding, “And that it is something that really goes to the core of privacy. And I want to maintain that constitutional protection.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLbes6stsRI
Mrs. Clinton said her position on Roe v. Wade has been the same “for many years,” and that while “there is room [under Roe v. Wade] for reasonable kinds of restrictions after a certain point in time,” that her position is that “this is a choice; it is not a mandate.” She added that having traveled “all over the world,” she has seen “what happens when governments make these decisions — whether it was forced sterilization [and] forced abortion in China or forced childbearing in Communist Romania.” The candidate concluded her remarks by saying, “So, I don’t think we should be allowing the government to make decisions that really properly belong to the individual.”
It is a real shame that Clinton does not apply that same thinking to areas outside the abortion debate. She has long supported forcing individuals to cede their decision-making power to government on a broad range of issues from hiring practices to purchasing health insurance and many points in between.
So, if Clinton stuck so close to the party line, why is she in hot water with some on the Left? It appears the nominee-presumptive forgot one of the Left’s cardinal rules of any discussion of abortion: Never call a fetus a person.
As the Washington Times notes:
Guidelines issued by the International Planned Parenthood Federation discourage pro-choice advocates from using terms such as “abort a child,” instead recommending “more accurate/appropriate” alternatives such as “end a pregnancy” or “have an abortion.”
Also from that article:
Describing the fetus as a “person” or “child” has long been anathema to the pro-choice movement, which argues the terms misleadingly imply a sense of humanity.
In addition, the specific term “person” is a legal concept that includes rights and statuses that the law protects, including protection of a person’s life under the laws against homicide. Pro-choice intellectuals have long said that even if an unborn child is a “life,” it is not yet a “person.”
Diana Arellano, manager of community engagement for Planned Parenthood Illinois Action, took to twitter to call Clinton out as a political heretic. On Sunday she tweeted:
@HillaryClinton further stigmatizes #abortion. She calls a fetus an ‘unborn child’ & calls for later term restrictions. #MeetThePress
— Diana Arellano (@diaarellano)
On Monday, she followed up with a tweet about Clinton’s “condescending” attitude toward young voters and included a link to an article from Rolling Stone in which the writer bemoans the magazine’s endorsement of Clinton, wishing instead that Sanders had received the Rolling Stone stamp of approval:
Not to mention her condescending comment abt feeling sorry for young people bc we apparently don’t do our research https://t.co/qtIVsmTlCP
— Diana Arellano (@diaarellano)
Clinton’s use of the phrase “unborn person” may play better for the Sanders campaign than all of her pro-abortion rhetoric plays for her. The Left — like the Right — appears to be a house divided. But in an effort to keep the camp together, Arellano sent one more tweet about Mrs. Clinton’s remarks on Monday:
Since some people are unclear, my tweets are my own opinions and not a reflection of where I work
— Diana Arellano (@diaarellano)
This tweet was in response to an article by the New York Times that quoted her previous tweets and said:
A longtime advocate of abortion rights, Mrs. Clinton is often criticized by anti-abortion groups. In this case, however, she frustrated some abortion rights supporters who said that her characterization of the unborn as a person shamed women who choose to terminate a pregnancy.
It requires little imagination to draw the inference that Planned Parenthood — which has endorsed Clinton — played a role in Arellano realizing she needed to temper her tweets once they were picked up by the media.
While the mainstream media struggles to brush aside Clinton’s admission that a fetus is “an unborn person,” Planned Parenthood — as an organization — has continued to endorse her candidacy. But voters on the Left — steeped in the rhetoric of the Left — are going to have to come to terms with her gaffe or look to a candidate who can keep his or her talking points straight while ignoring the obvious: A fetus is a person. The third option would be for the Left to acknowledge that obvious truth and move to protect the unborn.
Don’t hold your breath.
