Manchester, N.H.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a Republican, said former secretary of state Hillary Clinton should stop using “code words” when defending Planned Parenthood and reiterated his support for defunding the organization on a federal level. Christie responded to a video produced by Clinton’s presidential campaign in which the Democratic frontrunner directly criticizes Republicans for “assaulting” the nation’s largest abortion provider.
“When politicians talk about defunding Planned Parenthood, they’re talking about blocking millions of women, men and young people from life-saving preventive care,” Clinton says, looking into the camera. “I’m proud to stand with Planned Parenthood.”
In an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Christie said he wasn’t buying it. “Republicans want to stop Planned Parenthood from killing babies in order to sell their body parts, and maybe Mrs. Clinton should directly answer that,” he said. “Whenever Democrats want to fund Planned Parenthood, they talk about women’s health. Well, in New Jersey, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on federally qualified health clinics all across the state, we expanded Medicaid more to provided health care to women who need it. None of that has anything to do with Planned Parenthood. Hillary Clinton should look into the camera and defend the killing of babies in particular ways in order to maximize the value of their body parts for sale in the market.”
He added: “Mrs. Clinton will get some respect from me when she looks into the camera and defends that. Now, all the rest of it is garbage, and she’s a hypocrite.”
Christie, who stripped Planned Parenthood of its state funding in his first year as governor of New Jersey in 2010, called the recent revelations that Planned Parenthood selectively crushes body parts during abortions in order to save other parts for medical research “ghoulish.” He added the issue of taxpayer funding for the organization is “not even debatable.”
“She gets on there and uses code words,” Christie said about Clinton’s references to women’s health. “This is a woman who won’t answer questions about other things she doesn’t want to answer, so tell her to take her video and keep it to herself, because it’s useless. They’re killing babies to sell their body parts.”
