Hillary Clinton Campaign Press Release - 4 Women Respond To Donald Trump's Comments On Abortion

In an election where the Republican candidates for president have repeatedly made insulting, offensive comments about women—and put forward policies to match—Donald Trump lived up to his name this week. In an interview with MSNBC, he said that abortion should be illegal—and there would "have to be some form of punishment" for women who have an abortion.

When it comes to women's health and rights, the stakes in 2016 could not be higher.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Texas case that could have sweeping implications for women's ability to access safe and legal abortion across the country—not only today, but for generations to come. Here, four women take on the complex issue of abortion, Donald Trump's comments, the potential impact of the Texas case, and the importance of protecting women's health and rights in the upcoming presidential election.

President Donald Trump: the stuff of women's nightmares

By Christina Reynolds, deputy communications director?

I'll cut to the chase: Our next president could fill up to three Supreme Court vacancies. And there's no damn way we can entrust that responsibility to Donald Trump (or any of the other Republican candidates, for that matter).

The stakes are especially high for women if we let one of those guys into office—Trump's outrageous comments are proof of that. In case you missed it, he said abortion should be illegal, and if a woman gets one, "there has to be some sort of punishment."

Let me repeat that: Donald Trump wants to punish women for making their own health care decisions.

He also made sure to point out that the only way abortion will be outlawed in America is if we elect a president like him who'll appoint anti-choice judges.

We can't let Donald Trump—or any of the other Republicans—anywhere near the Supreme Court. These Republicans are the most terrifyingly extreme field of candidates I've ever seen—and if one of them wins, they could impose their views on women for decades to come via the justices they'll appoint. Instead of heroes like Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, we could have the next generation of Alitos and Thomases restricting our constitutional rights.

There's only one person who can stop them from winning the White House: Hillary Clinton. Generations of women are counting on her—and counting on us to help elect her. This election is way too important for us to let them down.

Donald Trump's remarks should make America sit up and pay attention

By Mini Timmaraju, women's outreach director?

Before I came to work for Hillary Clinton, I spent close to five years working for Planned Parenthood—a lot of that time in my home state of Texas. That work has had a profound impact on the way I see the stakes in this presidential election.

During his time in office, Governor Perry attacked women's health and Planned Parenthood. He cut funding for preventive care and screenings, and signed laws like the demeaning mandatory ultrasound bill, which forced women seeking an abortion in Texas to undergo a medically unnecessary ultrasound, whether they wanted to or not. And he signed House Bill 2, one of the nation's toughest abortion restrictions—after saying that his ultimate goal was to make access to abortion at any stage "a thing of the past."

It's hard to understate the impact of HB 2. Almost immediately after the law took effect, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast was overwhelmed with calls and women lined up outside to try and understand whether they would need to go somewhere else for their appointments. Doris Dixon, a friend and the call center director for Planned Parenthood, shared a heartbreaking account of a woman who traveled from out of state and stayed in Houston overnight, only to learn she could no longer have a procedure that had been legal days before. Doris wrote: "I don't know what will happen to her. I don't know that I will ever stop thinking about her. And she is just one woman whose life has been turned upside down by this law."

I thought the assault on women's rights and health care access couldn't get more egregious—or downright offensive. Enter Donald Trump. The Republican frontrunner just called for criminal action against women who have abortions. This is more than horrific rhetoric. It's a shot across the bow.

We've seen firsthand what happens when politicians put up barrier after barrier to stop women from getting the health care they need, and health care providers in an already struggling state are forced to close their doors.

And Donald Trump has made it clear that if he is elected president, what happened in Texas will play out across the country—and the consequences for women in America will be as disastrous as they have been in Texas.

We can't let that happen. This is why we do what we do. This is why we fight. And we need someone in the White House who will take up those fights alongside us.

This is about justice, plain and simple.

By Maya Harris, senior policy advisor

Law and policy aren't abstract issues or cheap campaign fodder. They affect people's lives every day, in big and small ways, for better or worse. And when candidates like Donald Trump call for criminalizing abortion, it matters.

Trump may be leading the race to the bottom when it comes to women's health and rights, but he's far from the only contestant. In the last five years alone, lawmakers across the country have enacted 231 restrictions on abortion. These restrictions put quality, affordable reproductive health care even further out of reach for women who already face the greatest obstacles to getting the care they need. It's a vicious cycle.

At a time when we should be doing everything we can to break down barriers that hold people back and build ladders of opportunity in their place, laws like these build even more hurdles for many already living on the margins and contribute to a culture of shame and stigma around abortion. And Donald Trump has made it clear that he would erect even more barriers—condemning us to a future in which the health care women need slips further and further out of reach every day.

We can't let that happen. Affordable health care is a basic human right. We have a responsibility to help all Americans realize that right—and not allow it to become a luxury reserved for those who can afford it.

That's why we need to work to defend and expand the Affordable Care Act, which covers 20 million more people—and level the health care playing field for women, who can no longer be charged more for the same coverage because of our gender. It's why we need to do more to bring down out-of-pocket health care costs that are still an insurmountable hurdle for too many. And it's why we need to fight back against restrictions on women's health across the country—and stop them from ever becoming law in the first place.

I've spent my career fighting for justice, equality, and opportunity. And Donald Trump's outrageous attack on women is about more than words—it's about the very real harm his policies would cause to women across the nation, and the disproportionate burden they will impose on low-income women, rural women, and women of color. This is a reproductive justice issue, a human rights issue, and an economic issue. Most of all, it's an issue of fundamental justice and equality under the law—and these attacks from politicians like Donald Trump are an affront to everything we should be striving for as a country.

Donald Trump's comments are horrific—and telling.

By Hillary Clinton

All of the Republican frontrunners for president want to make abortion illegal. Now Donald Trump has said how he'd enforce that prohibition: punishing women and doctors.

Donald Trump can try to distance himself from his comments all he wants. But we all heard what he said. As Maya Angelou said, "When people show you who they are, believe them."

Donald Trump keeps showing us who he is. We should believe him.

But it's important to remember that he's not alone. Donald Trump is just saying what Republican politicians across the country believe—everyone who has signed and voted for laws to defund Planned Parenthood, force women to undergo invasive and medically unnecessary procedures before ending a pregnancy, mandate that doctors recite misleading information to patients, and shutter every abortion provider for miles. These are laws that are meant to shame women and block their access to health care. That's their purpose.

We don't need to imagine the consequences of these laws. It's unfolding right before our eyes.

Right now, the Supreme Court is weighing whether a Texas law imposing unnecessary, expensive requirements on doctors who perform abortions will be allowed to stand. It's the biggest challenge to Roe v. Wade in a generation. There are so few abortion providers in Texas that getting an abortion can mean taking time off work, finding child care, driving halfway across a state the size of France, and spending a night in a hotel—any one of these things many women simply can't afford. If the Supreme Court rules that this law is constitutional, there could be just 10 abortion providers left in all of Texas—a place that 5.4 million women of reproductive age call home.

If you have to jump through multiple hoops to access a right, it's like not having that right at all. It's a privilege for the wealthy. And when politicians put up barriers that make it all but impossible for low-income women to get an abortion, they're jeopardizing women's health, economic security, and futures. That's just plain wrong.

I come to this issue as a woman, a mother, a grandmother, and a former lawyer. I also come to it as a former First Lady and Secretary of State. On behalf of the United States, I traveled to places where girls are married off as soon as they're old enough to bear children, because their worth is determined by their fertility, and where the denial of family planning consigns women to lives of hardship. I visited countries where governments have strictly regulated women's reproduction—either forcing women to have abortions or forcing women to get pregnant and give birth.

Everything I've seen has convinced me that life is freer, fairer, healthier, safer, and far more humane when women everywhere are empowered to make their own reproductive decisions.

And everything I've heard from Donald Trump and his fellow Republican candidates for president has convinced me that they have no regard for women or our ability to maintain autonomy over our own lives and futures.

They all want limited government—except when it comes to intruding on women's health.

Reproductive health and rights are a fundamental part of women's health and rights. And reproductive health includes abortion. So defending women's health and rights means defending access to abortion—not just in principle but in practice.

In 1995, I traveled to Beijing for the Fourth U.N. World Conference on Women. I addressed human rights abuses in China—including violations of reproductive rights. The message of that conference still echoes around the world today: women's rights are human rights. And reproductive rights are human rights, too.

We need to repeal laws like the Hyde Amendment that make it harder for low-income women, and disproportionately women of color, to exercise their full reproductive rights. We need to fight against the erosion of rights at the state level, where Republicans have signed laws designed to shame and coerce women and defund Planned Parenthood. We need to ensure that patients and staff are safe to walk into health centers without facing harassment, bullying, or violence. And we must always, always stand with the brave women and men across our country who are as committed as ever to providing safe and legal abortion care, even in places where that right is under concerted attack.

Whenever politicians become involved in deciding whether, when, and how a woman becomes a mother, it's not just degrading—it's dangerous. Few decisions are more sacred or intensely personal, and women deserve to make them for ourselves.

Here's the good news: While Donald Trump is a bully, voters will have our say at the ballot box. So if you disagree with his comments, you've got to vote. Vote like your health and rights depend on it. Because they do.