Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a new interview, criticized her Democratic colleagues for their response to the Roe v. Wade reversal. Wade for the Supreme Court, arguing they could have “done more.”
“We don’t take this seriously and we don’t understand the threat,” Clinton said in an interview with The New York Times, published Saturday. “Most Democrats, most Americans, don’t realize that we are in an existential fight for the future of this country.”
“We could have done more to fight,” she added.
The former first lady issued a dire warning in the February interview, alleging that Democrats have spent decades in a state of denial that the right to abortion — which had been enshrined for generations under Roe v. While in that state, Clinton said the anti-abortion movement was able to destroy legal precedent until it was too late.
“One thing I give credit for is they never give up,” Clinton said. “They are relentless. You know, they lose, they recover, they regroup and they raise more money.”
“It’s tremendously impressive the way they operate. And we don’t have anything like that on our side,” she added.
The former presidential candidate also criticized the conservative high court justices who handed down the landmark Dobbs v. Wade decision. Jackson Women’s Health, which devolved abortion access decisions to the states. She also hit Democrats in the Senate, who she said did not do enough to block the nomination of these judges.
“Our side was complacent and took it for granted and thought it would never go away,” she said in the interview, according to the Times.
Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to former President Trump, said she tried to sound the alarm during her campaign about anti-abortion efforts but was widely dismissed as alarmist. The Times noted that polls and focus groups from that time showed that voters didn’t really believe Roe v. Wade. Wade was at risk.
With Trump in the midst of his third campaign, Clinton warned that this fall’s election is “existential” because it could mean that a small group of conservatives would continue to “turn back the clock on women.”
Following the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, which resulted in controversy surrounding in vitro fertilization, Clinton warned that birth control would be next on the to-do list of Republicans who want to restrict women’s rights.
In the same interview, the former secretary also signaled that she faced sexism during the campaign, claiming that she was abandoned by voters because “she wasn’t perfect”.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
