Hillary Clinton’s Moral Conflicts on Abortion

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly spoken out in support of the right to abortion. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards has praised Clinton for treating reproductive issues as “more than just a sound bite” and the pro-choice organizations Emily’s List and NARAL Pro-Choice America have endorsed her. However, Clinton’s views on abortion are more nuanced and reflect her religious commitments to a greater degree than partisans on either side of the issue may realize.

For the most part, Clinton’s stance matches the official stance of the United Methodist Church, or UMC—the tradition in which she was raised and remains a faithful member. Clinton, who calls herself an “old-fashioned Methodist,” told a Newsweek interviewer in 1994 that abortion is morally wrong. One of her biographers, Paul Kengor, notes that she has turned to the UMC’s Book of Resolutions when she has wanted help reaching a decision or when grappling with a moral question. TheBook accepts abortion but only in a qualified way. It professes “the sanctity of unborn human life” while allowing that certain circumstances—“conflicts of life with life”—may warrant terminating a pregnancy. This may explain Clinton’s recent comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” during which, to the dismay of many pro-choicers, she described the fetus as an “unborn person.” She has also declared her support of some “late-pregnancy” restrictions that would go into effect perhaps as soon as the “unborn person” is viable, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life or mental or physical health of the mother is at risk.

Husband Bill has perhaps been a more reliable defender of legal abortion. Already pro-choice when he served as governor of Arkansas, he seemed troubled by the question of when life begins. He noted in his 2004 memoir that it is self-evident that biological life starts at conception. Even so, “No one knows,” he wrote, “when biology turns into humanity or, for the religious, when the soul enters the body.” Kengor reports that Bill sought the guidance of his then-minister, the Reverend W. O. Vaught, a conservative Baptist whose anti-abortion stance was well known. Vaught’s opposition, however, had been shaken by the real-life trials of parishioners faced with difficult pregnancies. Challenged by Bill to offer a definitive answer, Vaught turned to the Bible. Based on his reading of scripture, he concluded that not until God “breathes life” into a body does “personhood” start. Human life, then, begins at birth with the first breath, he said; while abortion may be morally suspect, it does not qualify as murder. For Bill, Vaught’s interpretation—which differs from the UMC’s—settled the issue.

In her public comments, Clinton has been more ambivalent than her husband. She has noted that the question of when human life begins is “delicate” and “difficult,” echoing the UMC’s position that the beginning of life is “the God-given boundary” of human existence. When Clinton was New York’s Senator, she refused to sanction legislation placing limits on access to contraception because, she argued, doing so effectively turns abortion into a stand-by method of birth control. In a 2006 email released by her campaign, Clinton argued that low-income women experience more unintended pregnancies when contraception is expensive or hard to find, and “almost half of unwanted pregnancies end in abortion.” She made clear in a 2007 Democratic presidential forum that she wants to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” And, she emphasized, “By rare, I mean rare.”

Clinton has broadened the scope of standard pro-choice arguments by acknowledging that abortion can be an agonizing decision and that it “representsa sad, tragic choice to many, many women.” She has also acknowledged that it can lead to long-term feelings of guilt and regret, which the UMC calls “post-abortion stress”—after-effects rarely discussed by pro-choice activists. When women weigh whether to terminate a pregnancy, Clinton counsels them to “summon up what we believe is morally and ethically and spiritually correct and do the best we can with God’s guidance.” Once again, her religiously grounded advice tracks the UMC’s: “We call all Christians to a searching and prayerful inquiry into the sorts of conditions that may cause them to consider abortion. We entrust God to provide guidance, wisdom, and discernment.”

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