A Look Back at Senator Hillary Clinton's January 25, 2005 Speech on "Reproductive Rights"

Thank you all very much for having me. I am so pleased to be here two days after the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision that struck a blow for freedom and equality for women. Today Roe is in more jeopardy than ever, and I look forward to working with all of you as we fight to defend it in the coming years. I'm also pleased to be talking to people who are on the front lines of increasing women's access to quality health care and reducing unwanted pregnancy -- an issue we should be able to find common ground on with people on the other side of this debate.

We should all be able to agree that we want every child born in this country and around the world to be wanted, cherished, and loved. The best way to get there is do more to educate the public about reproductive health, about how to prevent unsafe and unwanted pregnancies.

OK, so far relatively PC. Mom, apple pie, every child wanted, cherished, loved. Not much anyone could argue with.

My own views of family planning and reproductive rights are heavily influenced by my travels as First Lady. I saw firsthand the costs to women when the government controls their reproductive health decisions.

In pre-democratic Romania, they had a leader named Ceausescu, a Soviet style Communist dictator, who decided it was the duty of every Romanian woman to bear five children so they could build the Romanian State. So they eliminated birth control, they eliminated sex education, and they outlawed abortions.

Once a month, Romanian women were rounded up at their workplaces. They were taken to a government-controlled health clinic, told to disrobe while they were standing in line. They were then examined by a government doctor with a government secret police officer watching. And if they were pregnant, they were closely monitored to make sure you didn't do anything to that pregnancy.

If a woman failed to conceive, her family was fined a celibacy tax of up to 10 percent of their monthly salary. The terrible result was that many children who were born were immediately abandoned, and left to be raised in government-run orphanages.

Now we're getting somewhere! Debate on the extreme of the extremes to scare everyone away from the middle. If you oppose abortion, you are leading us down a slippery slope to forced pregnancies, strip searches and secret police monitoring women whose value has been reduced to that of an incubator.

Now with all of this talk about freedom as the defining goal of America, let's not forget the importance of the freedom of women to make the choices that are consistent with their faith and their sense of responsibility to their family and themselves.

All this talk about freedom? Stunning how she treats the subject of freedom with such reverence... all this talk about freedom.. sheesh. Anyway, is this really a simple manner of the right to make choices? If I choose to kill my teenager because I choose to no longer have a family, and I just happen to be an atheist so I'm not too concerned about that hell and damnation thing, is that OK? Of course not, because we are a "nation of laws" (anyone else tired of that phrase?). Well, is that law stopping me from killing my child constitutional, after all, it limit my freedom to choose? And isn't it a violation of my religious freedom to have a law based upon the Ten Commandments... you know, that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" thing?

Of course that's a ludicrous assertion. I can not kill my child because in so doing I have imposed my "choice" on the child in such a way asa to limit the child's freedom to live. So... my choice is somewhat limited. Heck, we can't choose to drink at 20, drive at 11, or take drugs the government determines are illegal. So, let's not hide behind freedom of choice... our choices are limited by government for the overall good of society all the time.

As such, there is no valid argument that it is unconstitutional to limit the choice to abort a child simply because someone no longer wants to have a child. Laws, by their very definition, limit choice and restrict freedoms.

I heard President Bush talking about freedom and yet his Administration has acted to deny freedom to women around the world through a global gag policy, which has left many without access to basic reproductive health services.

Women around the world? Ummm... what's your point? That my tax money should go to paying for abortions or abortion education in other countries? What about MY choice and MY religious beliefs? Why is it OK for my money to pay for abortions in other countries? Do I have a choice?

This decision, which is one of the most fundamental, difficult and soul searching decisions a woman and a family can make, is also one in which the government should have no role. I believe we can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women. Often, it's a failure of our system of education, health care, and preventive services. It's often a result of family dynamics. This decision is a profound and complicated one; a difficult one, often the most difficult that a woman will ever make.

Sad.. tragic... a failure of our system... not really anyone's fault except perhaps the government... or family dynamics. How convenient, "I feel bad I had to kill my two year old, but it's really not my fault, if only I had known before I got pregnant that the terrible two's would be so tough; where was the education when I needed it?" ... "This kid is really cramping my style... family dynamics are all messed up....". Sounds ridiculous, right. The only difference between the two arguments is the age of the human in question. So let's not blame someone else for our decisions and let's not hide behind circumstances. No government role? Who is to say? I have a whole laundry list of things I'd like the government to have no role in and I bet you do too; that's just no the way it works.

I worked alongside my husband who launched the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy in the mid-1990s. This organization, which has proven to be a tremendous success, was really was born out of my husband's 1995 State of the Union address, which declared teenage pregnancy to be one of the most critical problems facing our country. We set a national goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies by one-third over the decade.

Back then I used the phrase "teenage celibacy" over and over. Of course, no one talks about "teenage celibacy" anymore, but the message remains relevant and necessary today. I think it's a synonym for abstinence.

Why yes, I think you are right. Celibacy and abstinence from sex are synonyms. No wonder you are considered one of the smartest women on the planet :-) Sorry... couldn't resist.

The good news is that the National Campaign, which has nourished many new and fruitful partnerships like those with Time Warner and with the faith community, has helped achieve the goal that my husband set in his State of the Union in 1995. Between 1991 and 2003, the teen birth rate fell 32.5 percent to a record low. The National Campaign has also conducted and disseminated some critical research on the important role that parents can play in encouraging their children to abstain from sexual activity.

I think this is very good news, and perhaps President Clinton deserves a good deal of credit. I'm not sure what then First Lady Clinton's role was, seeing as she was not a member of the administration and could have an official role because of federal laws governing these things. But the really curious thing that I'm thinkinabout is the window that is being used to proclaim success.

In 1995 President Clinton set a national goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies by one-third over a decade... that would be from 1995 - 2005.

Unwanted pregnancies were reduced by one-third from 1991 to 2003... so the reduction started 4 years before the start of the program... now that is efficient. Here's an interesting chart I pulled together using data from National Campaign's website and infoplease:

It could easily be argued that the single greatest contributor to the reduction in teen pregnancy is the fear od AIDS. The chart appears to show a correlation between public awareness of AIDS and a drop in teen pregnancy.

So I'm very proud of the work of the National Campaign. We'll be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and I will continue working with them to keep the number of unwanted pregnancies among our teenagers falling until we get to zero. But we have a long road ahead.

Today, even with the recent decline, 34% of teenage girls become pregnant at least once before their 20th birthday, and the U.S. has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any industrialized country. Children born to teen moms begin life with the odds against them.

I hear the odds aren't too great for children who are aborted either.

They are more likely to be of low-birth weight, 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade, and significantly more likely to be victims of abuse and neglect. And girls who give birth as teenagers face a long, uphill battle to economic self-sufficiency and pride. Clearly we do have our work cut out for us.

Research shows that the primary reason that teenage girls abstain is because of their religious and moral values. We should embrace this -- and support programs that reinforce the idea that abstinence at a young age is not just the smart thing to do, it is the right thing to do.

So.. the government should encourage abstinence on religious grounds? I thought the current PC position was a constitutional right of freedom from religion.

But we should also recognize what works and what doesn't work, and to be fair, the jury is still out on the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs. I don't think this debate should be about ideology, it should be about facts and evidence -- we have to deal with the choices young people make not just the choice we wish they would make. We should use all the resources at our disposal to ensure that teens are getting the information they need to make the right decision.

Amen! Errr.. I mean, no argument there.

A big part of that means increasing access to family planning services. I have long been a strong supporter of Title X, the only federal program devoted solely to making comprehensive family planning services available to anyone interested in seeking them. Each year, approximately 4.5 million people receive health-care services at Title X-funded clinics. Nearly two-thirds of Title X clients come from households with incomes below the poverty level. And just to remind you, the poverty level is currently set for a family of three at $15,620. So where do these two-thirds of Title X clients go to receive the services they need? Unfortunately, despite the Clinton Administration working to obtain a 58% increase during the 1990s, the Bush Administration proposed level funding for Title X at $265 million for the 2003 and 2004 budgets, and Congress appropriated only $275 million in 2003.

Ummm.. regardless of whether you agree with Title X or not, let's stop playing with the facts here. Headline:

President George W. Bush and the Republican-majority Congress
Increased Title X to record $288.3 million in FY 2005 on 12/8/04

This FY 2005 Bush administration Title X funding level of $288 million (an estimated $50-$60 million of which will be paid to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, for population control), exceeds by over $30 million, the highest Title X level during the Clinton administration, in FY 2001, of $254 million!

So President Bush and those meanies in the Republican lead Congress INCREASED funding of Title X in 2003, 2004 and 2005 (after this speech presumably) and Mrs. Clinton implies it was cut! Folks, I've been biting my tongue but I gotta say it, and the evidence to support what I'm about to say goes waaaaayyy back: Senator Clinton can't help herself; lying and deception are her nature. She lies even about stuff that doesn't make her point... but that's for another day. Back to the topic at hand.

It's also important that private insurance companies do their part to help reduce unwanted pregnancies. That is why I am a proud co-sponsor of the Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage -- the so-called EPICC. The legislation would require private health plans to cover FDA-approved prescription contraceptives and related medical services to the same extent that they cover prescription drugs and other outpatient medical services. This bill simply seeks to establish parity for prescription contraception.

What a minute. Isn't contraception a choice? Isn't this part of a right to choose? And insurance companies will be compelled to pay for that choice?

Thanks to so many of the people in this room and the advocates, the EPICC law is now in effect in New York State having been passed and signed in 2002. It's a real role model for the nation. And it's about equal rights and simple justice. After all, if insurance companies can cover Viagra, they can certainly cover prescription contraceptives.

In other words: Yeah right, snicker, snicker. They can cover Viagra for men to have sex but not for women to prevent unwanted pregnancies. It's a man's world, blah, blah blah...

OK. so here's the distinction (as if they didn't know). Viagra is intended to treat a real medical condition; no Viagra, no right to choose to have sex. Prescription contraceptives, on the other hand, do not treat a medical condition and are used as one of many options, including condoms, to prevent unwanted pregnancies. To draw a closer equivalency, insurance companies would have to pay for condoms for men. By the way, there are hormone treatments for woman who have sexual arousal problems and these are covered by medical insurance; but that would mess up their argument a nd dirty little innuendos about Viagra.

Contraception is basic health care for women,

Ummm.. no it's not...

and the burden for its expense cannot fall fully on all women,

Why?

many who after all live below that poverty rate, and in many instances above it, but not by very much and have a hard time affording such prescriptions. Just think, an average woman who wants two children will spend five years pregnant or trying to get pregnant, and roughly 30 years trying to prevent pregnancy. As I said earlier, and you know so well, the U.S. has one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancy in the industrialized world. Each year, nearly half of the six million pregnancies in this country are unintended, and more than half of all unintended pregnancies end in abortion.

Wow.. and they say guys have problems keeping it in their pants. You would think having sex was a constitutional right or as unavoidable as eating or breathing.

The use of contraception is a big factor in determining whether or not women become pregnant.

Really.. wow, that's deep. Almost as big a factor as whether or not a women has sex in the first place.

In fact, this is a statistic that I had not known before we started doing the research that I wanted to include in this speech, 7% of American women who do not use contraception account for 53% of all unintended pregnancies.

Wow! Who paid for this intense study. Women who DON'T use contraceptives much more likely to get pregnant than women who DO use contraceptives.

So by preventing unintended pregnancy, contraception reduces the need for abortion. Improving insurance coverage of contraception will make contraception more affordable and reduce this rate of abortion. And expanding coverage and resources for Title X will do the same.

OK.. now I get it. The abortion rate is high because the government is paying for contraceptives so women can go have sex whenever they want with men who either do or do not use Viagra. It's all the government's fault... finally we come down to the reason we have abortions. We have abortions because women have sex, get pregnant and then don't want the baby, and it's just not their fault.

......a roadmap to the destination of fewer unwanted pregnancies -- to the day when abortion is truly safe, legal, and rare.

Someone should ask people who use this buzzphrase... how many abortions does it take for abortion to be considered rare? What is an acceptable number of abortions in a given year? 1... 1,000... 10,000... 100,000... 1,000,000?

......Because I know we can make progress on these issues; the work of the Clinton Administration and so many others saw the rate of abortion consistently fall in the 1990's. The abortion rate fell by one-fourth between 1990 and 1995, the steepest decline since Roe was decided in 1973. The rate fell another 11 percent between 1994 and 2000, from about 24 to 21 abortions for every 1,000 women of childbearing age.

Hmm.. according to the CDC, the rate in 1995 was 20 per every 1,000 women of child bearing age; but according to Mrs. Clinton, it had dropped to 21 per every 1,000?

Since we are quoting statistics, in 1996:

• A total of 1,221,585 legal abortions were reported to CDC, representing a 0.9% increase from the number reported for 1995.
• The abortion ratio was 314 legal induced abortions per 1,000 live births, and as in 1995, the abortion rate was 20 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years.
• Women who were undergoing an abortion were more likely to be young (i.e. aged less than 25 years), white, and unmarried; most were obtaining an abortion for the first time.
• More than one half of all abortions (55%) were performed at less than or equal to 8 weeks of gestation, and approximately 88% were performed before 13 weeks.
• Approximately 4% of abortions were obtained at 16-20 weeks, and 1.5% were obtained at greater than or equal to 21 weeks.

A bit of quick math shows that more than 18,000 babies were aborted after 7 months!

But unfortunately, in the last few years, while we are engaged in an ideological debate instead of one that uses facts and evidence and commonsense, the rate of abortion is on the rise in some states. In the three years since President Bush took office, 8 states saw an increase in abortion rates (14.6% average increase), and four saw a decrease (4.3% average), so we have a lot of work still ahead of us.

Hmmm.. the last national statistics reported (on November 25, 2005) would have been after Hillary's speech, and they were reported for 2002. I'm not sure how increasing abortion rates makes her point, but cherry picking states and comparing them to national statistics is at best disingenuous:

• A total of 854,122 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC for 2002 from 49 reporting areas, representing a 0.1% increase from the 853,485 legal induced abortions reported by the same 49 reporting areas for 2001.
• The abortion ratio, defined as the number of abortions per 1,000 live births, was 246 in 2002, the same as reported for 2001.
• The abortion rate was 16 per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years for 2002, the same as for 2001.
• For the same 48 reporting areas, the abortion rate remained relatively constant during 1997--2002.
• During 1990--1997, the number of legal induced abortions gradually declined.
• When the same 48 reporting areas were compared, the number of abortions decreased during 1996--2001, then slightly increased in 2002.
• In 2000 and 2001, even with one additional reporting state, the number of abortions declined slightly, with a minimal increase in 2002.

So the good news is the rate is dropping; the bad news is nearly 1 million babies are aborted in this country every year!

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That's enough for me.. you can read the rest on your own at the link on the top of this page.