Biden and Reproductive Freedom
By 
I have argued that dreams of a Biden run for the presidency only have a couple of minor problems, such as that he’s plainly a much worse candidate than Clinton and there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them on policy. On the latter point, I was being unfair to Clinton:
It’s no secret that Biden is personally a pro-life Catholic. He takes what he believes is a “middle-of-the-road” position on abortion law, as he wrote in his 2007 campaign memoir, Promises to Keep: “I still vote against partial-birth abortion and federal funding, and I’d like to find ways to make it easier for scared young mothers to choose not to have an abortion, but I will also vote against a constitutional amendment that strips a women of her right to make her own choice.” That, at least, was an improvement from 1982, when, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he did vote for a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade.
In 2012, the National Right to Life Committee compiled a report on Biden’s anti-abortion voting record that was intended to highlight what it called Obama’s “extreme pro-abortion positions.” The documentation in the dossier is solid. There is a scan, for example, of a 1994 letter that Biden sent to a Delaware constituent who was concerned that abortion funding would be included in health care reform. “I will continue to abide by the same principle that has guided me throughout my 21 years in the Senate: those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them. As you may know, I have consistently – on no fewer than 50 occasions – voted against federal funding of abortions.”
It must be said in Biden’s defense that Roe would have been overruled had Robert Bork not been defeated, a defeat Biden played a major role in. It must also be said that he seemed cowed by the remarkably successful Republican effort to argue that accurately characterizing Robert Bork’s views was the greatest breach of civility in the history of American political discourse, and his subsequent handling of the Thomas hearings was a disaster for women on every possible level.
Would Biden being worse on reproductive freedom than Clinton as an occupant? Possibly not, although I’m not sure if I would trust him to veto clever anti-abortion legislation that got passed by a Republican Congress like Bill Clinton did. Is there any reason to think he’s a better choice for the Democratic nomination than Hillary Clinton? No.