w hen then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, he told the crowd at that party’s convention, “Abortion should be safe, legal and rare.”
That was in July. The following January — two days after his inauguration — Clinton made promoting abortion a central focus of his new administration.
“Mr. Clinton signed five abortion-related memorandums on the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade,” The New York Times reported on Jan. 23, 1993.
Clinton’s abortion directives, as reported by the Associated Press, included allowing “abortion counseling at federally supported clinics,” permitting “research using fetal tissue from abortions,” allowing “abortions at military hospitals,” permitting “funding for overseas population control programs” and reviewing “a ban against importation of RU-486, the French abortion pill.”
In his written memorandum directing the Food and Drug Administration to carry out this last provision, Clinton also stated, “I direct that you promptly assess initiatives by which the Department of Health and Human Services can promote testing, licensing, and manufacturing in the United States of RU-486 or other antiprogestins.”
In September 2000, not long before Clinton finished his second term in office, the FDA approved the use of abortion-inducing drugs in the United States.
