Joe Biden’s Abortion Flip Flop, Revisited (Updated)
Aug 25th, 2008 by Mark Stricherz
I mentioned Saturday that Joe Biden had flip flopped on the issue of abortion, noting that he had announced his support three decades ago for a pro-life constitutional amendment. Well, here is my capsule summary of the Congressional Record (pp. 11577-80):
On April 28, 1976, Sens. Jesse Helms and John Pastore (D.-R.I) sponsored Senate Joint Resolution 178. The language of the amendment, a forerunner to the Human Life Amendment of 1983, read as follows:
Section 1: With respect to the right to life guaranteed in this Constitution, every human being, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, or of any State, shall be deemed, from the moment of fertilization, to be a person entitled to the right to life.
Section 2: Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
For the record, the Senate vote was whether to lay on the table the motion to proceed to the consideration of S.J. Res. 178. A “no” vote was a vote for the amendment, while a “yes” vote was against it. The motion passed 47-40.
While Biden announced his support for the amendment (through Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield), several Catholic Democrat senators voted for it. Among those were Ted Kennedy and Pat Leahy.
… Just so you know.
(Photo of Biden in Ankeny, Iowa by user IowaPolitics.com used under a Creative Commons license.)
UPDATE: Ramesh takes back his comment that Biden was pro-life:
[A]fter receiving correspondence from one of my valued readers, I’m persuaded that Biden’s support for the amendment did not make the label fit. He never said, as far as I know, that states should protect the unborn. (I’ll let you know if I hear otherwise.)
This last sentence betrays a confusion about the proposed Helms-Pastore constitutional amendment, which admittedly I failed to clear up. By announcing his support for the amendment, Biden was saying that states should — indeed, must — protect the unborn. The amendment did more than overturn Roe and Doe. It granted legal protection to human embryos and fetuses. As Helms said on the Senate floor,
Although this amendment definitely prohibits abortion in every case where the mother’s life is not at stake, it is not intended to invalidate past, present, and future laws in the States which permit abortion to save the life of the mother. Nor is it intended to prevent the State legislatures and the courts reviewing State laws from continuing to regard abortions to save the life of the mother as a matter of self-defense and, therefore, legally justifiable according to the general principles of self-dfense that apply to all human beings … My amendment would merely apply the existing principles of due process of law and equal protection of the laws to all human beings, including the child in the womb.
Back in the early 80s Joe Biden was known as solidly pro-life by those in the movement. Among democrats he and Mary Rose Okar were the first names thought of, and in the same category as Jesse Helms and Chris Smith.
Well not quite in the same category as Jesse Helms. Jesse Helms stood above them all. And he had a staff which was unsurpassed.