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Clinton Announces She’s for Taxpayer-funded Abortions
Via NRO, Hillary Clinton wants to end the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother. Via C-SPAN, here’s the relevant portion of the speech in question, in which she also praises Planned Parenthood, whose political action group has already endorsed her for president.
While I doubt that the Hyde Amendment can be repealed given Republican control of the House and Senate, expect widespread protests and civil disobedience if it were to happen.
Clinton’s move signals how far left the Democratic candidate is, and how far she is willing to go to win the presidency. Like Obama, she will tear this country apart to gain power.
Published in Politics
So long as someone is there to overrule him on the 2A, absolutely.
Certainly don’t want to get into a discussion of exactly what defines a libertarian, how the definition of libertarian has changed, and whether or not the queen of all libertarians was or wasn’t exactly one.
But — Ayn Rand was strongly pro-choice, and she has many followers.
Turns out about 57% of libertarians are pro-choice.
And sure, some would surely want to know whether or not tax dollars expended on abortion are cost effective for taxpayers in the long run. But that’s a tough one to prove.
Libertarian presidential hopeful Gary Johnson is as pro-choice as Roe v. Wade, i.e. until fetal viability outside the womb. I guess that makes him 5/9 pro-choice, the same narrow fraction by which the Supreme Court is presumed to uphold the decision.
Which is why it’s a good issue for
Hillary Clintonwhoever wins the (D) nomination.All of these tells you precisely squat about any individual libertarian or whether libertarians would support taxpayer funded abortions (they wouldn’t)
Don’t be so sure. I think they’d like to cut the welfare budget and other entitlements and incarceration costs rung up by out-of-wedlock teen births in the slums.
Hopefully we won’t have to find out, if taxpayer supported birth control can be proven to dramatically reduce the demand for abortions.
The old Bill Clinton formulation, making abortion safe, legal, and rare is the smart political hand to play. Even the hard-core pro-lifers have got to like the sound of “rare” more than “free on demand.”
Right…
Because the easiest way for libertarians to do that would be through tax payer funded abortions?
When I read that line, it was all I could do to keep from screaming “WAR ON DRUGS!” at the top of my lungs.
Jim,
Do you have any actual evidence of libertarian support for taxpayer funded abortion or just your supposition and innuendo?
If they are in favor of overturning the Hyde Amendment, they are not pro choice.
Just my opinion. I researched and thoroughly debunked the notion that libertarians aren’t pro-choice. If you want to learn more about what the 57% believe, do your own research.
Repealing the Hyde Amendment is not yet politically feasible. Seventeen states broadly fund abortions for low-income women.
That was never in contention.
The question was libertarian support for tax payer funding for abortion.
“Pro-choice” and “pro-taxpayer-funded-abortions” aren’t the same thing.
This. There’s no way a repeal of Hyde is passing this or the next Congress.
It’s a fairly simple attempt to push the issue into the public eye, when she’d rather talk about anything but e-mails, whether people are better off then 8 years ago, Benghazi, whether we want a third term of Obama or worse, Bill’s war on women, etc. Don’t fall for it, keep on target.
Of course. So far as I can tell, Fred, libertarians try to be logical, reasonable people. [Maybe not all those I ran into at FreedomFest, but hey, where else can you have a quick face-to-face with Steve Forbes and get Hayek and Mises t-shirts?]
Anyway, it’s logical and reasonable to minimize government spending of all types, except that needed for the common defense. (Into which basket I would throw fighting enemies like pestilence, nuclear proliferation proximate to Islamists, and fiscal bleeding from a million paper cuts via scammed entitlements.)
If the entitlement spending bubble and a $19 trillion debt are the most imminent danger of all, then surely we question every penny spent in Washington. But on the state level, if it can be shown that taxpayer funded birth control, and where it fails, abortions, among the poor actually reduce a multiplying factor on the debt spiral, I’d expect business-minded libertarians to be among the first to take a hard, cold look at the numbers.
Pro-choice states are the places where tax-payer supported abortions happen, with or without the support of small “l” libertarians. These states are controlled by liberals, so of course they’ve got a hefty public debt, e.g. my state, California. Here the libertarians are helping out on the revenue side, by bringing in gobs of tech money to help offset the liberals’ spending. Or to fund it, because an unsettling number of well-to-do techies are going “progressive” on us. Now that’s a serious concern! Makes you wonder why.
Back to your question. If 57% of libertarians are pro-choice, are many also for tax-payer funded abortions? The only way to find out for sure is to ask some. I wish we had more on Ricochet, though I can understand why they may not do so publicly.
I see the logic behind that from a utilitarian stanpoint, but I don’t think you’ll find a lot of libertarians eager to confiscate taxpayer money in order to shrink entitlements.
I solicited response from libertarian Ricochetti I know — admittedly, a very unscientific process — and not a single one of them endorsed the idea; indeed, most thought it was offensive and confessed to not knowing anyone who holds that position. Let’s review:
I specified “pro-choice” libertarians. Are you and the people you asked pro-choice on abortion rights?
I’m fall into the “pro-choice” category and I’m opposed to forcing people who are opposed to it to paying for abortions.
But I think you’re being dishonest, Jim. You’ve created something that fits your worldview (pro-choice libertarians who want tax payer funded abortions) and without giving us any examples, you’re asking us to prove they don’t exist.
By the logic you specified above, you could also claim that libertarians must favor giving people free guns. They support gun rights, and more gun ownership would lower crime and therefore the tax burden, so they must favor giving free guns to people, right?
Obviously that’s ridiculous, as is your suggestion that libertarians must be in favor of tax payer funded abortions.
I support legal abortion up to 20 weeks, and identify as a (small-l) libertarian. No way I support using taxpayer money to pay for any abortion at all – period.
JK has erected a straw man, apparently representing only his own biases. He’s the one who needs to support it with evidence.
I pay taxes in California. We all pay taxes. Let’s not get hyperbolic about it, just because of how it’s spent.
Speaking of hyperbole, I am of the opinion that calling abortion murder is highly offensive, and against Ricochet’s own CoC goal of fostering civil discourse. It should be discouraged. Conservatives do not agree on all issues. Social conservatives are not the only variety. Political discourse requires mutual respect.
Abortion is a legal right in this State and in the U.S. while murder is a criminal offense. Fetuses are not “babies.” I know at least one member who walked away from Ricochet because of this problem.
Aye, that’s the rub, isn’t it? Many think they are.
Wasn’t there a post on Ricochet just today about how there are laws in a majority of states defining the killing of the unborn as murder, so long as the mother doesn’t want to kill the child first?
You’ll understand if your fixation on wanting us to pay to kill the babies of poor women — distasteful? Putting it mildly.
How lucky Herself is to be endorsed by PP:
This is the legacy that those who claim to be pro-
choiceabortion share.Not really. I’m talking dictionary definition here.
What’s distasteful and offensive is language like “kill babies.” It is not civil discourse.
Taxpayer supported abortion is a legitimate issue for political conversation. Am I “fixated” on this issue because I’m the only one around here willing to argue for it? It’s not like this is one of a dozens of hundred post conversations on same sex marriage. Talk about fixation.
Are you afraid that some pro-choice member of the website might be persuaded by the fiscal argument behind letting poor kids go on being kids for a few more years before they begin families?
If the rest of us have a lower tax burden because some pregnant 12-year old gets to stay in school and wait ten years before beginning a family, well, so much the better.
Is is more “tasteful” to speak about breaking their cycle of poverty, than to speak about society’s need to head off the costs of entitlements and incarceration that so often follow? If you think it is, then you’re a “compassionate” conservative, and I’m just the guy who wants your taxes cut and debts paid.
As stated earlier, abortion should be the last resort after birth control fails. The real cost saver may be government sponsored free birth control. Or easier, longer lasting birth control.
Okay! So we’re 1-1 in our survey of the burgeoning pro-choice community of free thinkers here on Ricochet.
I think your opinion reflects the first instinct of many libertarians, just not all. It was my first instinct, too, not on the basis of forcing people to pay for something, but in terms of what I wanted to pay for. Then, after I began to see what free birth control could do, I began wondering if we needed a good goalie to back up our defensemen.
We all pay for things we don’t believe in due to mandatory taxation. But it’s all “fungible” — like the way they funged away the social security trust fund.
Maybe our tax forms should include a few questions on how you’d like your money being spent. Half the country could put most of their chips on national defense, and the other half could fund poverty programs. No one would want to pay the interest on the national debt, which could be problematic.
It would be interesting to see what people chose. My guess is if the survey went deep enough, there would be a huge increase in funding for research against major diseases. Anti-terrorism would do well. Taypayer funded abortion would probably not get too much, unless the right campaigned against giving them any, in which case they’d do quite well.
Not a great way of running the government, but maybe better than lobbyists.
How it’s spent is one of the main reasons to get hyperbolic about it, no matter what the topic.
I believe abortion should be legal up to about 10 weeks and, thereafter, treated as homicide. If pressed, I could negotiate that cut-off.
Abortion is an ugly business Jim, there is nothing civil about it. We can dress it up with all kinds of euphemisms, or be like Nancy Pelosi and say that we even hate saying the word abortion. Four decades of legal abortion have wrought havoc on this country. Over one million “pregnancies terminated” per year in support of “women’s health”. You may find the words “killing babies” uncivil, but I find the carnage and evil horrifying. I suppose the disclosure of the works of Kermit Gosnell and the CMP videos of PP weren’t civil discourse either because they revealed the distasteful and offensive nature of the abortion industry.
Abortion is horrifying, it kills babies.
Jim Kearney, if you’re making this argument on utilitarian grounds, I wonder why you’re not advocating not only that there should be taxpayer-funded abortions, but that every taxpayer-funded abortion should include a tubal ligation?
Two very different cases.
In my opinion, journalists did the nation a disservice by ignoring the Gosnell story. This is an area where the law (representing a true national consensus) sees criminal behavior. Abortion until viability remains a permanently protected legal right, not murder. Gosnell was involved in infanticide and other forms of medical malpractice. The best strategy your side could have is to focus on late third trimester situations.
The Planned Parenthood videos showed that both sides are capable of vulgar discourse. Entrapment + partisan editing + an unrepresentative clinic = a bogus tabloid story. Fox News, mostly, exploited the situation shamefully. More shameful was the language of the poorly trained idiots caught on tape. To me, the worst part of this is that a civil conversation about tissue research in medical science didn’t get airtime. Even so, I think the MSM made the right call by essentially burying the manufactured “story.”
^This.