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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve dietrich who wrote (691854)	7/13/2005 3:49:52 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

So the question is this: What are Mrs. Clinton's core beliefs and have they changed in the years since she took office? Abortion Ever since she was first lady of Arkansas, Mrs. Clinton has paired her support for abortion rights with the goal of preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Like her husband, she has made "safe, legal, and rare" her mantra on abortion. Doing that has enabled Mrs. Clinton to give Democratic women what they want to hear by championing abortion rights at political rallies, while stressing prevention, sexual education and abstinence when she wants to reach out to the middle. The national health care plan she helped shape in the early 90's guaranteed that abortion services "would be widely available," as she said at a televised forum in October 1993. At the same time, she said doctors and hospitals could decline to perform them under a "conscience exemption," and she stressed prevention above all. Running for the Senate in 2000, she promised to outdo the opponent she expected to face, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in their mutual support of abortion rights. "I would want New Yorkers to know that I wouldn't only vote right, but I would be a strong voice, and I would attempt to organize as much as I could to make sure that I defended a woman's right to choose," she told reporters after a National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League luncheon. She has said she would vote against a Supreme Court nominee who opposed abortion rights, and she voted against a ban on a certain kind of late-term abortions in 2003. Then came her speech on abortion this January, at a time when some Democrats felt they lost the 2004 presidential race because the party was seen as too liberal on social issues. In a speech to New York family-planning advocates in Albany, she used nuanced language about abortion to try to convey that she was no champion of the procedure itself. She called abortion a "sad, even tragic choice" and reached out to opponents perhaps more unequivocally than ever before, judging from a review of several of her speeches and remarks on abortion over time. "I, for one, respect those who believe with all their hearts and conscience that there are no circumstances under which any abortion should ever be available," she said in January. Toward the end of the same speech, she even described a possible future where "the choice guaranteed under our Constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances." It was a measure of her power, however, that women's groups were reluctant to criticize that speech despite any private misgivings. The one part of the abortion debate in which her views show a change is parental notification. While in Arkansas, she says, she supported laws to notify parents when a minor sought an abortion, unless a judge granted an exception. Now in New York, she says she supports the state law of informed consent, which is quite different. Under informed consent, health care providers have to give information about medical options and risks only to patients, including those seeking abortions. In May, Mrs. Clinton drew some fire from conservatives by opposing a Republican-backed bill that would make it illegal for anyone to help under-age girls go out of state for an abortion without their parents' consent. Aides to Mrs. Clinton have said she would support parental notification, with judicial exceptions, in states that do not follow New York's model.