(LifeSiteNews) – White House Gender Policy Council director Jennifer Klein pushed back Monday on claims that Democrats up to and including President Joe Biden believe in completely unlimited and even post-birth abortion despite the party and its leaders’ consistent refusal to identify any abortion limits they would accept.
During a Zoom press briefing on the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher asked Klein to address a “pair of false attacks on abortion.”
“The one, first one is the one that Donald Trump keeps saying that Democrats believe in aborting the child after birth — murdering children after they’re born, based on something Ralph Northam said a few years ago,” he said. “And then there’s another one where they say Democrats support abortion up to the ninth month because there’s no specific number of weeks in the viability framework.”
“First and foremost, the president and the vice president do not support abortion up until the time of birth,” Klein responded. “Nor do they support abortion after birth. In fact, that’s not abortion! Second of all, you know, both the president, the vice president, this entire administration has been quite clear and unequivocal that we support restoring the protections of Roe in federal law, and we’re not proposing something new.”
Klein went on to label both points as “really a blatant effort to distract from the extremist agenda” Republicans supposedly hold. In the audio and transcript provided by Mediaite, Christopher (who framed his question from a pro-abortion perspective) does not follow up by asking Klein to produce an example of an abortion restriction which Biden or Harris would accept.
In fact, for years national Democrats have consistently rejected opportunities to endorse or pass any limits on abortion — including protections for fully-born babies — and have instead promoted policies that would render the practice effectively unlimited.
Throughout his presidency, Biden has demanded Congress pass legislation to codify a “right” to abortion in federal law, specifically endorsing in his election campaign, specifically endorsing (along with nearly every Democrat in Congress) the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which would forbid states from passing any law that not only prohibits abortion but would be “reasonably likely to delay or deter” or “indirectly” raise the cost of abortions. While the bill would ostensibly let abortion be restricted after fetal viability, in practice it gives abortionists the discretion to decide if a post-viability abortion is “necessary” for a mother’s “health” (a similar loophole in Roe and its companion ruling Doe v. Bolton renders Klein’s insistence that the White House only wants to restore Roe unresponsive to the charge).
Harris, meanwhile, has refused in interviews to name a point at which she would no longer support legal abortion, and for years congressional Democrats have overwhelmingly voted against both the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban elective abortions after five months (with exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies), and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would require abortionists to transfer infants who survive abortions to hospitals for basic medical care.
Democrats are banking heavily on pro-abortion fear driving enough favorable turnout to win them the 2024 elections. So far, however, national polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH continue to indicate a razor-thin popular vote between Trump and Biden, with Trump’s leads in swing states translating to a Electoral College victory.