COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP/WBTW) – Nearly every Democratic presidential candidate is addressing a Planned Parenthood Action Fund forum. It’s the campaign season’s first such event focused on abortion, an issue already roiling the packed filed of White House hopefuls.
Saturday’s event is happening on the sidelines of the South Carolina Democratic Convention, a pivotal gathering of the party faithful in the South’s first primary state.
As Republican-controlled legislatures have approved increasingly tough abortion restrictions, many of the Democratic presidential candidates are vowing to only nominate Supreme Court justices who consider the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing the procedure as settled law.
That includes Senator Kristen Gillibrand of New York. She says she will make the right to abortion a federal law if elected president.
She criticized the measures several states passed to make it harder to get an abortion. She also said President Trump will lose his “war on America’s women”
“Make no mistake: if President Trump wants a war on America’s women, it’s a war he’s gonna have and it’s war he’s going to lose,” Gillibrand said.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts made similar remarks. “I say, it is time to go on offense with Roe v Wade. It’s not enough to say we’re going rely on the courts. We need to pass a federal law to make Row v Wade the rule of the law all across this country.”
But tensions still flare. Former Vice President Joe Biden long refused to oppose a congressional ban on using taxpayer money for abortions – only to recently reverse himself amid intense Democratic criticism.
