A major pro-life group criticized Hillary Clinton for comparing opponents of abortion to terrorists on Thursday.
"Now, extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups," the former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate said at a rally in Ohio on Thursday. "We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world. But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the President of the United States. Yet, they espouse out of date and out of touch policies. They are dead wrong for 21st-century America. We’re going forward. We’re not going back."
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, called the comparison "outrageous," given that nearly half of all Americans identify as pro-life.
"Hillary Clinton’s outrageous comparison of pro-life Americans to terrorists is a slap in the face to every American—whether Republican or Democrat, woman or man—who value the gift of life and support commonsense limits on abortion. She is shockingly out of touch," she said in a release.
Abortion has been the center of attention throughout the summer after undercover videographers began releasing footage of top Planned Parenthood officials and doctors harvesting and selling baby organs to researchers. The Center for Medical Progress videos feature abortionists discussing ways to harvest organs more efficiently, as well as how to "line item" body parts, in order to maximize prices.
Clinton was initially silent on the videos, but later she told a New Hampshire newspaper that she found the images "disturbing." She later backtracked from that position and began using her support for late-term abortion to attack the Republican field, which is almost universally pro life.
"Over the last few weeks, America’s eyes have been opened to the pain that Planned Parenthood, a top Clinton ally, inflicts on the vulnerable. Graphic undercover videos have revealed Planned Parenthood’s practice of harvesting and vivisecting unborn children and then profiting off of their organs. Rather than defaming compassionate, sensible Americans who want to stop this horror, Clinton ought to be distancing herself from the abortion business," Dannenfelser said.
CMP footage also revealed that abortionists and organ peddlers are fond of Clinton. Cate Dyer, the CEO of StemExpress, a group that partnered with about 100 Planned Parenthood clinics to buy and sell baby organs to researchers, told investigators that she keeps an autographed photo of Clinton on her desk.
""I’m a huge Hillary fan … she’s getting elected this time. It’s a done deal as far as I’m concerned," she said in footage obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Clinton campaign has collected about $10,000 from Planned Parenthood employees—20 times higher than the rest of the crowded 2016 field combined. A spokesman did not respond when the Washington Free Beacon asked him whether the Democratic frontrunner planned on returning the money. Clinton hired the daugher of Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s president, for a high-ranking post in Iowa. On Tuesday, she hired a former Planned Parenthood official to lead her outreach to the Asian community.
Dannenfelser said that Clinton’s support for late-term abortions, including the now-illegal practice of partial-birth abortion, could prove an electoral liability. Voters overwhelmingly support bans on late-term abortion. Almost every GOP candidate has endorsed a 20-week ban on abortion, which every Democratic candidate opposes. That reform has received support from nearly 60 percent of the population with women approving of the limit at a higher rate than men, according to multiple polls.
"Doubling down on her support for unlimited abortion on demand, up until the moment of birth, paid for by taxpayers, will not win voters to Clinton’s cause," Dannenfelser said.