Ballot Boxing: Clinton slammed for saying 'unborn person'

Welcome to Ballot Boxing, WORLD’s political roundup of news and views from the presidential campaign trail.

As the presidential candidates tromp around New York ahead of the state’s primary on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton’s recent language during a discussion about abortion is still reverberating.

The offending phrase Clinton used: “unborn person.”

But lest pro-life advocates find a glimmer of hope in the Democratic Party front-runner’s choice of words, consider Clinton’s full quote to Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press on April 3: “The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.”

That’s a breathtaking statement—not because it’s surprising coming from a pro-abortion candidate, but because a pro-abortion candidate is openly acknowledging the unborn victim in an abortion is a person.

Clinton went on to say we should help a mother who is “carrying a child and wants to make sure that child will be healthy,” but she made clear she thinks the decision belongs to the mother.

Pro-life advocates expressed dismay over Clinton’s comments, but so did at least one abortion proponent.

In a tweet, Diana Arellano of Planned Parenthood Illinois Action said Clinton’s statement “further stigmatizes #abortion.”

Arellano added, “She calls a fetus an ‘unborn child’ & calls for later term restrictions.” (Clinton told NBC there is “room for reasonable kinds of restrictions” on abortion in the third trimester.)

This is offensive language to Planned Parenthood. The group’s international guidelines for “rights-based messaging” claim: “‘Abort a child’ is medically inaccurate, as the fetus is not yet a child.”

But while Arellano blasted Clinton, it’s notable the rest of the organization seemed to remain silent. When I searched for additional public comments from other officials at the abortion giant, I found nothing.

Perhaps that’s partly because Clinton has been one of Planned Parenthood’s staunchest defenders, vowing she will “always defend” the nation’s largest abortion provider, and excoriating those calling for an end to the group’s federal funding.

During Clinton’s time as secretary of state, USAID—the U.S. government’s humanitarian agency that works closely with the State Department—awarded millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood’s international arm.

A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office said USAID gave $128 million to the Population Council and to members of the International Planned Parenthood Fund between 2010 and 2012.

Planned Parenthood officials have praised Clinton’s 100 percent voting record (for pro-abortion causes) in the U.S. Senate, but Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards has also praised Clinton’s activism: “We have a lot of friends in Congress, but we have one true champion.”

If Clinton’s recent language about the “unborn person” was a slip, Richards hasn’t called her on it. The day after Arellano criticized Clinton’s comments, she posted a follow-up tweet: “Since some people are unclear, my tweets are my own opinions and not a reflection of where I work.” Arellano also removed any reference to her employer from her Twitter account.

Clinton seemed eager to display her pro-abortion bona fides in her debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Thursday night.

“We’ve not had one question about a woman’s right to make her own decisions about reproductive healthcare, not one question,” she lectured to the CNN moderators. “And in the meantime we have states, governors, doing everything they can to restrict women’s rights.”

Sanders touted his own 100 percent pro-abortion record, and said instead of cutting funding for Planned Parenthood, he would expand it.

When it comes to some Republicans’ calls for defunding Planned Parenthood, Clinton said: “We need to be … defending Planned Parenthood from these outrageous attacks.”

It was a fortuitous moment for Clinton to remind voters of her abortion record ahead of Tuesday’s primary in New York.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 31 percent of pregnancies in New York ended in abortion in 2011. And abortions in New York accounted for 13 percent of all abortions in the United States—a huge number of of unborn persons who will never get a vote.