At Campaign’s End, Democrats See Limits of Focus on Abortion
By LULU Y. COHEN
“I don’t know what we are going to do about abortion but we are going to do something about it,” said Senator Joe Biden, upon announcing his 2016 candidacy for president. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about it, but we are going to do something about it and we would like to make [it] more available.”
The Democratic Party’s abortion position has undergone several changes in the past several months, but one thing has remained the same: “I’m not sure what we are going to do about abortion.” The Democratic Party’s abortion position has undergone several changes in the past several months, but one thing has remained the same: “I’m not sure what we are going to do about abortion.”
Biden’s statement comes toward the end of his first term as the most notable Democratic presidential candidate. His candidacy has focused on the issue of abortion even more than it has throughout his career.
When he ran for the Senate in 1991, he was an ardent supporter of abortion rights. That support has remained prominent in his platform to this day. In January, he voted against a ban on federal funding of elective abortions through the Department of Health and Human Services. Since then, he has changed his mind on abortion rights in different ways. He has now decided that an “anti-discrimination” law limiting the use of federal grant money for abortion providers would not be a good thing. He has said that he is open to supporting a constitutional amendment banning abortion in all circumstances.
When he ran for president in 2007, he supported an “anti-miscegenation” amendment, an amendment that would prohibit the government from funding abortion. Now that he is running for re-election in a purple-state, he is saying that he is now “re
