Clinton Opens Debate on Family Planning

[lindisfarne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/nyregion/14hillary.html?pagewanted=print

June 14, 2006
Clinton Opens Debate on Family Planning
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
WASHINGTON, June 13 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton moved on Tuesday to shift the debate over abortion rights to the subject of access to family planning services, saying that the nation's focus should be on preventing unwanted pregnancies.
<snip>
"Let us unite around a common goal of reducing the amount of abortions," the senator said. "Not by making them illegal as many are attempting to do, or overturning Roe v. Wade and undermining the constitutional protections that decision provided, but by preventing unintended pregnancies in the first place through education, contraception, accessible health care and services, empowering women to make decisions."
<snip>
In making the case for reducing abortions, rather than outlawing the procedure, Mrs. Clinton noted that her husband's administration managed to reduce teenage pregnancy by nearly one-third through an ambitious campaign that focused on family planning.
<snip>
"But today," she continued, "the U.S. continues to have one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancies in the industrialized world. Half of the six million pregnancies are unintended, and nearly half of those end in abortion every year." Citing a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, which is a nonprofit corporation with headquarters in Washington and New York that researches reproductive health, Mrs. Clinton noted that a poor woman is four times as likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy as a higher-income woman. High-income women have quick, convenient access to contraceptives; low income women do not," she said. "And the result is often and increasingly becoming unintentional, unintended pregnancy."

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Wonder how the wingers will spin this one?

Will they dare come out with their true agenda, which is to ban all forms of contraception?

[geiger]

2. Too much information....

...not sure of the context here, but if we are going to win the political battle, it's going to be by repeating a simple slogan over and over again, not talking about the downfalls of what goes on in America vs. other places. All this mumble jumble just stirs up the nutwings on the other side.

[femrap]

4. Here in Ohio where the most extreme anti-choice

bill (HB 228) has been introduced, our response (very similar to what Hillary is stating) has shut the religious wing nuts up for the time being.

If you want a bumper sticker response to the right wing, how about 'tie it in a knot.' That could at least change the focus to elsewhere.

[987654321]

3. Did she just say something that made sense?

I mean, was she actually speaking to and sticking up for the Democratic base? Did she kind of sound somewhat like the liberal she used to sound like?

I agree with what she said, but I am astonished that she said it with all of the right-wing rhetoric she has been spewing out in the past several months.