Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Monday that President Trump is doing “exactly” what he campaigned on during the 2016 election by emboldening “right-wing Republicans” to restrict abortion rights.
“It is truly a dire situation,” the New York senator said on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.”
“President Trump has emboldened right-wing Republicans,” she said. “He has emboldened them with the nomination of Justice[s] Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. And this was something he ran on and said he would do and it’s exactly what he’s doing.”
“He’s basically taking away our basic human rights to make those decisions about our families — when we’re having children, how many we’re having, under what circumstances,” she continued. “And they’re criminalizing women’s decisions and criminalizing the doctors who provide that care.”
Ms. Gillibrand agreed with host Trevor Noah that some laws shouldn’t be solely written by men, “because men have no clue about what is actually happening in a woman’s body,” Mr. Noah said.
“Yes, I mean I think this shows why I’ve worked so hard over the last seven years to elect more women to Congress,” Ms. Gillibrand responded. “We need to lift up women’s voices, and women need to fight. They need to fight like everything that they care about is at stake, because it is. It’s a life or death issue for many women.”
“The 2018 election cycle was about women running for office and winning, getting the women’s votes out,” she added. “So women are on fire and if this is a fight President Trump wants with the American people and America’s women, it’s a fight he’s going to have and it’s a fight he’s going to lose.”
Just prior to his 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump declared that he was pro-life and supported the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which ruled in 1973 that women had a constitutional right to an abortion.
Mr. Trump also promised to nominate Supreme Court justices who supported his position that abortion rights should be a states issue.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.