Evangelist leader and vocal Trump supporter Franklin Graham on Thursday went after Chelsea Clinton for saying women’s access to abortion helped boost the economy, saying that Hitler probably claimed that “killing the Jews” would be good for the German economy.
Graham took to Twitter to share Clinton’s comments from “Rise Up for Roe” — a pro-abortion event advocating against the confirmation of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh — at its tour stop in New York.
“@ChelseaClinton, daughter of former President @BillClinton & @HillaryClinton, claims that legalizing abortion added trillions of dollars to the economy,” Graham tweeted alongside a link to a Breitbart News article about Clinton’s remarks. “What a lie. Hitler probably also claimed that killing the Jews would be good for their economy.”
Clinton said earlier this week that there was a connection between Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, and the economy.
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“It is not a disconnected fact … that American women entering the labor force from 1973 to 2009 added $3.5 trillion to our economy,” Clinton said at the event. “The net, new entrance of women — that is not disconnected from the fact that Roe became the law of the land in January of 1973.”
Clinton later responded to The Hill on Twitter, citing references to reports which found a connection between women’s access to abortion and socioeconomic consequences.
Clinton tweeted references to a 1992 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, a November 2017 report from the Center for American Progress, and a 2013 study published in Brookings Institution Press and appearing on the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine, PubMed Central. Clinton also linked to case details in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, in which the court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, but with some provisions.
Clinton defended her comments on Tuesday, tweeting that her words have been misrepresented. Clinton pointed to a recent study, which found a connection between women’s access to abortion and socioeconomic consequences.
“Reproductive rights have always been economic rights,” Clinton tweeted. “A recent study found denying women — often already mothers — a wanted abortion results in years of less employment & more family poverty.”
Conservative writer Erick Erickson also attacked Clinton on Twitter, comparing her comments with those of slave owners in the 1800s.
“In the 1800’s, slave owners said slavery was about economic rights,” Erickson said. “Always and without fail the arguments of the abortion movement in the United States mirror the arguments of slave owners. Both are grave evils.”
Clinton responded to Erickson directly, saying her comments were “not the same at all.”
“Hi Erick — protecting reproductive health rights is first about protecting women’s human rights and health,” she tweeted on Wednesday. “From 1973-1985, American women’s deaths from abortion declined 5-fold. And, reproductive rights are about women’s economic rights and agency. It’s … not the same at all.”
According to a study published in March 1987 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the overall death rate resulting from legal abortion dropped nearly fivefold between 1972 and 1982.
— Updated Aug. 17, 11:54 a.m.