Joe Biden's long evolution on abortion rights still holds surprises [View all]
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joe Biden’s decades-long evolution on abortion rights has in many ways mirrored the changing attitudes of the Democratic Party, growing increasingly supportive over time.
But his past opposition to most federal funding for abortion services is more striking than previously recognized, according to an NBC News review of his Senate voting record, and includes repeated examples of Biden rejecting exceptions for victims of rape and incest that were supported by many members of his party at the time.
As a U.S. senator from Delaware, Biden voted against a 1977 compromise that allowed Medicaid to fund abortions that included exceptions for victims of rape and incest in addition to concerns for the life of the mother. While the rape and incest exceptions passed in that case, Biden voted in 1981 to again remove them, in what was the most far-reaching ban on federal funds ever enacted by Congress.
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In that 1981 vote, he was one of just two Democratic senators from the Northeast, the other being George Mitchell of Maine, to vote to end federal funding for abortion for victims of rape and incest. Fellow Catholics Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York as well as Democrats from other blue-leaning Northeastern states supported the exceptions. Biden voted in line with conservative Republicans like Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Democrats from red states like Robert Byrd of West Virginia.
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And while Biden later became a staunch defender of Roe, in addition to consistently opposing federal funding of abortions, he did vote in 1981 for a failed constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe. At the time, he called it “the single most difficult vote I’ve cast as a U.S. senator.”
When it came up again the following year, Biden voted against the bill.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-s-long-evolution-abortion-rights-still-holds-surprises-n1013846
If I were to vote in a presidentialprimary today, I would vote for: Undecided
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