HILLARY CLINTON: Donald Trump 'has no idea what's best for women'
Screenshot/CNN
Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump in a Friday speech, contending the presumptive Republican nominee "has no idea what's best for women."
The former secretary of state slammed the New York businessman over his statements on paid family leave, equal pay, and abortion during her address to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in Washington, DC.
Her address came as Trump was preparing to give a speech at the Faith and Freedom Conference just miles away.
The presumptive Democratic nominee called out Trump for saying guaranteed paid family leave would make America less competitive, that equal pay would be earned if women "do as good a job" as men, and that the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade — the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationally.
"We are not going to let Donald Trump or anyone else turn back the clock," she said.
"But don’t worry," she later said. "Donald assures us that, as president, he’ll be – and I quote again – ‘the best for women.’ Anyone who wants to defund Planned Parenthood and wipe out safe, legal abortion has no idea what’s best for women. And after all, this is a man who has called women ‘pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ Kind of hard to imagine counting on him to respect our fundamental rights."
Clinton made a point of bringing up remarks Trump made in March on abortion, when he told MSNBC host Chris Matthews that "there should be some form of punishment" for women who would break the law in a future US where abortion was once again made illegal.
"They've set the law and, frankly, the judges — you're going to have a very big election coming up for that reason because you have judges where it's a real tipping point, and with the loss of [Antonin] Scalia, who was a very strong justice, this presidential election is going to be very important," he said.
The Manhattan billionaire added that the legality of abortion depends on the November election.
"When you say what's the law, nobody knows what the law is going to be," Trump said. "It depends on who gets elected."
Trump also said that he understood women would have to resort to going to "illegal places" to have abortions should the law change, but "you have to ban it."
He quickly walked back the remarks in a statement released by his campaign:
If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman.
The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed - like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.
"Now, once he said that there was an outcry, as there should have been, and he tried to walk back his comments," Clinton said Friday. "He's doing that a lot lately."
"But anyone who would so casually agree to the idea of punishing women — like it was nothing to him, the most obvious thing in the world – that is someone who doesn’t hold women in high regard," she said. "Because if he did, he’d trust women to make the right decisions for ourselves."
She then posed a question: Do women want to put their health, lives, and futures in Trump's hands?
"Now, these questions aren’t hypothetical," she said. "Every woman – and everyone who cares about women – will answer them when they vote in November."
Watch clips of Clinton's remarks below:
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