Good News! It Only Took Two Minutes to Solve the Abortion Crisis During Last Night‘s Debate

Kaelyn Forde
Photo credit: Getty
Photo credit: Getty

From Cosmopolitan

If you watched the latest Democratic primary debates to find out how the candidates plan to safeguard your reproductive freedom in the face of new statewide abortion bans and other increasingly hostile laws…well, you’re in luck! Abortion finally came up at 10:12 p.m. on the second night, after almost five hours spent talking about whose health care plan is the best and how Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wants to Clorox the Oval Office (which, yes, also important).

Never mind that reproductive rights advocates have taken to saying “when” Roe v. Wade is overturned, instead of “if.” The candidates—well, two of them, at least—managed to cover the topic in less than three minutes, without even saying the word “abortion.” And without the moderators even bringing it up! Here’s how the nuanced exchange went down:

Senator Kamala Harris started things off by attacking former Vice President Joe Biden for his longtime support of the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funds from being used for most abortions and which disproportionately impacts poor women and women of color.

NARAL was excited this topic was finally going to be addressed!

“You made a decision for years to withhold resources to poor women to have access to reproductive health care, including women who were the victims of rape and incest,” Harris told Biden.

Biden responded by saying that every person on the stage had “voted for the Hyde Amendment at some point” and that his new health-care proposal will fund reproductive health care.

“The Hyde Amendment, in the past, was available because there was other access for those kinds of services provided privately,” he said. (Like abortion? Is that one of “those kinds of services”?)

Harris pressed on: “Why did it take so long until you were running for president to change your position on Hyde?”

Biden assured us that he supports “a woman’s right to choose.” None of the other candidates were offered a chance to weigh in at all. Then Gov. Jay Inslee jumped in, saying it was time to “broaden” the discussion to a “bigger scandal in America,” which is unequal pay for women. (Yes, Jay...but...also...abortion!!!)

Finally, the CNN moderator said it was time to move on to foreign policy, aka the real stuff!

So…that was it! Biden previously supported Hyde, and now he does not! That’s what we learned. Hope it was edifying for you too!


Cosmo reached out to top reproductive rights activists to see what they thought of the debates.

“Given that 26 abortion bans were enacted in 12 states this year, a discussion on abortion would be an important part of the political discourse,” Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, told us.

“At a time when the other side is quite literally pulling out all the stops...it’s disappointing that nobody in this field is calling this out and explicitly describing what they will do to restore these rights across the country,” adds Illinois State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, who helped pass her state’s law expanding abortion access.

“It’s possible that there’s some assumption that being pro-choice is a given in a Democratic primary, but that’s not good enough. We need to know which candidate has the ideas and capacity to repair the harm that’s already been done by this administration,” she added.

Alexis McGill Johnson, the new acting president of Planned Parenthood, agreed:

“Voters deserve more from these debates—1 in 3 women of reproductive age in America could lose the right to safe, legal abortion if Roe is overturned,” she told us. “The Trump administration is dismantling the nation’s program for affordable birth control for 4 million low-income patients. Yet moderators at the Democratic debates avoided the topic of sexual and reproductive health care altogether. This is unacceptable.”

Amanda Thayer, the deputy national communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, added, “The stakes for reproductive freedom and access to abortion are extremely high…we are looking to the moderators of the next debates to ask about candidates’ plans to address the unprecedented attacks on reproductive health care and protect Roe v. Wade.”

RT! RT!

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