Hillary Clinton is the pro-life candidate this election, according to one Huffington Post blogger.
Just in time for Election Day, The Huffington Post published a piece with the headline, “Against Abortion? You Should Vote For Hillary Clinton.” In it, OB/GYN and Huffington Post blogger Jennifer Gunter argued that Hillary Clinton would reduce abortions, unlike Donald Trump, because she supports funding for birth control.
“I am a doctor who has dedicated her career to helping woman [sic],” Gunter began. “If abortion is what matters to you in this election, I’d like to put rhetoric aside and focus on the facts.”
She began by citing the Guttmacher Institute. 45 percent of pregnancies are unplanned, Gunter said, and “42 percent of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion.”
In other words, “If you want to reduce abortion, you have to work on unplanned pregnancies,” Gunter argued.
Gunter highlighted one main reason for a surprise pregnancy: lack of access to “highly reliable contraception.”
“Birth control prevents abortion by preventing unplanned pregnancies,” she wrote, and “Studies tell us that access to long acting reversible contraception dramatically reduces the abortion rate.”
Birth control, not laws, reduce abortion, she continued.
“Laws do not reduce abortion,” she wrote. “They reduce safe abortions.” (If there is such a thing as “safe” when one person always dies in abortion.)
As a part of her argument, she drew from her own experience before abortion was legalized in the United States.
“I trained with men who were OB/GYNs in the 1960s and the 1970s and they saw the women who survived when they came to the emergency room,” she said.
“If you really want to reduce abortion,” she added, “you must vote for the candidate who will improve access to highly reliable contraception.”
For her, that was Hillary Clinton. She embedded a tweet from the Democratic presidential nominee:
Every woman, no matter where she works, deserves birth control coverage. This shouldn't be a question. #SCOTUS -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 16, 2016
Donald Trump, on the other hand, didn’t make the cut. She quoted his statement against reimbursement for birth control for women during an interview with Dr. Oz:
I think what we have in birth control is, you know, when you have to get a prescription, that’s a pretty tough something to climb. And I would say it should not be a prescription, it should not be done by prescription.
Gunter took issue with Trump because “making birth control over the counter does not help women access the forms of birth control that are most effective at preventing pregnancy” – forms like IUDs and implants.
“Taking away health plan contraceptive coverage makes the birth control that reduces abortion unaffordable for many women,” she added.
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In her eyes, healthcare plans must pay for birth control to really end abortion. And Trump would hinder that. Gunter finished with a rant:
If your candidate focuses on restrictive laws, you will drive women underground, which will increase their financial hardship and many will risk their health and lives, but you will not reduce abortions.
If your candidate wants to lift the birth control mandate from the Affordable Care Act or repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with health care that does not cover birth control you, will not reduce abortions.
If your candidate wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood, a source of subsidized highly-reliable contraception that would otherwise be unaffordable, you will increase abortions.
If your candidate focuses on maintaining and even expanding government and employer funding of highly reliable contraception, your vote will reduce abortions.
“It really is that simple,” she concluded.
Gunter did not address what each candidate has actually said about abortion itself nor did she relay that Clinton boasts support from abortion giant Planned Parenthood while Trump holds support from pro-life leaders.
