Hillary Clinton's Shifting Stance on Abortion and Birth Control

Hillary Clinton is a self proclaimed "people's champion" but mostly the focus of her coming campaign will be on "equal rights" for women and the LBGT "community", a position which has seen many changes over the course of her "career". Let's start where she says she is today and work backward.

Hillary Clinton's keynote address at the 2015 Women in the World Summit

Even The New York Times has been questioning Hillary's campaigning and the fund raising practices of The Clinton Foundation accepting huge donations from countries where women's rights are routinely voilated or non-existant.

MIAMI — It was supposed to be a carefully planned anniversary to mark one of the most important and widely praised moments in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political career — and to remind the country, ahead of a likely 2016 presidential campaign, about her long record as a champion for the rights of women and girls.

Instead, as Mrs. Clinton commemorates her 1995 women’s rights speech in Beijing in back-to-back events in New York, she finds herself under attack for her family foundation’s acceptance of millions of dollars in donations from Middle Eastern countries known for violence against women and for denying them many basic freedoms.

But the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars in donations from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Algeria and Brunei — all of which the State Department has faulted over their records on sex discrimination and other human-rights issues.

The department’s 2011 human rights report on Saudi Arabia, the last such yearly review prepared during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, tersely faulted the kingdom for “a lack of equal rights for women and children,” and said violence against women, human trafficking and gender discrimination, among other abuses, were all “common” there.

Saudi Arabia has been a particularly generous benefactor to the Clinton Foundation, giving at least $10 million since 2001, according to foundation disclosures. At least $1 million more was donated by Friends of Saudi Arabia, co-founded by a Saudi prince.

Republicans quickly zeroed in on the apparent contradiction. Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief, told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month that Mrs. Clinton “tweets about women’s rights in this country and takes money from governments that deny women the most basic human rights.”

And on Wednesday, the Republican National Committee released a biting video showing President Obama calling political donations from foreign sources “a threat to our democracy” — and Mrs. Clinton smiling next to several Middle East leaders.

On Saturday, Mrs. Clinton’s husband, the former president, felt compelled to defend the foundation’s fund-raising. At an event at the University of Miami, where Mrs. Clinton and the couple’s daughter, Chelsea, discussed “No Ceilings,” the foundation’s project measuring the advancement of women and girls, he defended the charity’s acceptance of foreign donations, pointing to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in particular.

“Do we agree with everything they do? No,” Mr. Clinton said. “You’ve got to decide when you do this work whether it will do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country,” he added.

Read more

For a deeper examination of Hillary's voting record "on the issues" For a comprehensive list of Clinton statements on abortion over the years

Now let's turn the clock back a couple of decades:

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's PSA on Health Care March 17, 1993

Remember the big hair and shoulder pads of the 1990's?

Recently tapes have been unearthed spanning the years 1983-1987 including a case in which she defending a man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl. She recalls the case in vivid detail, often laughing about this case, proud that she had been able to plea bargin the case down.

The Slate takes a slightly "different" view of this event with the article “How Can You Represent Those People?”

The renewed fuss over Hillary Clinton’s defense of a man accused of child rape in 1975 is a familiar, if politicized, version of what criminal lawyers call the “cocktail party question.” We hear it all the time: “How can you represent those people?” Those of us who are feminists and criminal defense lawyers are sometimes asked a variation of the question: “How can you represent rapists?”

Clinton has pointed out that she took the case at the request of both a prosecutor and judge. As a matter of professional ethics, Clinton did the right thing in accepting a court appointment to represent an indigent charged with a repugnant crime, and her representation is not an endorsement of the client’s conduct. As Clinton told the British online network Mumsnet, “I had a professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I did.”

... But Clinton should not have to apologize for her defense of her client, or for feeling proud of the outcome: a plea to a lesser charge and short jail sentence. She is being taken to task for “laughing” about the case in an interview from the 1980s, when she was first lady of Arkansas. But nowhere in that interview does she laugh at the alleged victim. She laughs when she describes her client’s polygraph results and prosecutors bungling the case by destroying evidence. This is familiar criminal defense gallows humor.

According to press accounts, the case fell apart because of a combination of factors: contradictory statements by the complainant, prosecutorial incompetence, and “aggressive” defense advocacy. But it is wrong to call Clinton’s thorough investigation of the case, including sending evidence to a forensics expert, overly aggressive. Likewise, developing a viable defense theory—that a troubled child might not be a credible witness—is not at all improper. Clinton was right to pursue her client’s interest no matter the charge or her own misgivings. She understood that she could not be both lawyer and judge.

I think it's safe to say, Hillary Clinton has been consistantly inconsistant on these issues.

Or have I been eating paint chips again?