Hillary's Insightful Wisdom on Roe v. Wade
“If it is your personal belief, based on whatever, that there is no legitimate basis for abortion — even if you’re in the hospital and you’re bleeding out, even if you’re told that you have cancer and chemotherapy is necessary and therefore an abortion is necessary — no matter what, you get to make that decision. I might not agree with it, but you get to make that decision.
But you, and those who support your particular point-of-view, cannot dictate that decision to every other woman.
In a pluralistic democracy like ours, the court in Roe v. Wade said the government is not going to make this decision.
If these Supreme Court justices and the very extreme Republicans who support them really cared about children, why don’t they support health care for every pregnant woman in our country? Why do they let a big state like Texas deny health care, because they won’t expand Medicaid, to mothers who want to have their children? And they therefore have the highest rate of maternal mortality in America.
Why don’t they support child care, so that, if a mother is going to be forced to give birth to a child, that mother will be able to support herself and her child because she will be able to go out and work. And the list goes on.
This is not, at the end of the analysis, about anything other than controlling women with some kind of patriarchal view of society that they want to impose on the rest of us.
Democrats need to be willing to point out the extremism that has captured the Republican Party and to make it clear this is not about special interest groups. This is not about one group of Americans vs. another. This is about the rise of authoritarianism within our own country.
This is a direct attack on our democracy.
Americans took for granted that, despite opposition to reproductive choice, it would not go away.
There was a complacency, an acceptance.
During the 2016 campaign, I gave speeches about this. I talked about the dangers that would be posed to this right and other rights if my opponent were elected, because of the promises he’d made to the extreme factions within the Republican Party.
And, honestly, people didn’t believe me.
Their attitude was, oh, that sounds really farfetched. That will never happen.
Oftentimes, in politics, the entrenched status-quo position is not as vigorously defended as the opposition position. And so those who wanted to overturn Roe, those who wanted to turn the clock back, were very motivated. And those who said, oh, well, that’s settled law, including people sitting on the court, when asked in their confirmation hearings, gave every reason to reassure the American public — telling us they follow past precedent.
Either they have had some kind of brain change, or they were deliberately misleading the American people.
So, yes, the energy was on the side to overturn. Now I hope that energy will shift to the side of those of us who want to protect the progress we have made.
This is a direct assault on the dignity, rights, and even lives of American women.
It is heartbreaking to see this court dominated by extremists who do not represent the majority of Americans, men and women, who believe that this is a right that women should have — doing all they can to set the clock back.
This is the first time, perhaps, that I’m aware of, that a right will actually be taken away.
So, what can be done?
There has to be a recognition that, as horrible assault as this is on women’s rights, it is perhaps only the beginning of this court trying to undo so much of the progress of the last 50 years.
Now saying there is no right to privacy — that Roe was decided wrongly.
Roe followed a case called Griswold, which struck down a law prohibiting married heterosexual couples from having access to contraception.
It served as the basis of decriminalizing consenting sexual behavior between gay people who were adults and able to express their own feelings toward one another. It certainly underpins gay marriage. So, this is a real threat to our democracy, not just to the rights of women.
I don’t care what political party or religion you are — the question is, who decides?
Is the government going to be in your bedroom?
Is the government going to be making these decisions?
We’re only at the beginning of this terrible travesty that this court has inflicted on us.
The ultimate goal of the decision is truly to erase the progress that women have made from the last 150 years.
There are so many things about it that are deeply distressing, but women are going to die.
Women will die.
These justices were selected for this very purpose.
You’ve got to give the other side lots points for their relentlessness, their total commitment to getting what they want done, regardless of who is hurt by it and regardless of who is stripped of rights.
Everybody now understands that this is not necessarily the only effort that we’re going to see this court undertake to turn back the clock on civil rights and gay rights and women’s rights beyond abortion.”
—Hillary Rodham Clinton
= new reply since forum marked as read
You should cross-post this in the Hillary Clinton Group for posterity! 
I've done that for a few of Hillary Clinton's speeches/appearances in the Hillary Clinton Group where we have a collection of her best.
Hillary Clinton (Group)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1107
I missed Hillary on CBS and I'm gad I had a chance to read her words and see these videos.
Bookmarking
Thanks friend! Hillary is right, of course
