Bill Clinton: “Well, I don't agree with that in my proposal, and obviously I don't know what would happen in the others, but let's look…”

“Well, I don't agree with that in my proposal, and obviously I don't know what would happen in the others, but let's look at that. The abortion rate has been going down in America. And I think it's been going down for--maybe because of all the protest against abortion. But I also think that most Americans have deeply ambivalent feelings. That is, I believe that a majority of Americans are pro-choice and anti- abortion. That is, they don't believe that the decision should be criminalized because there are too many different circumstances where most of us feel that decisions should be left to the people who are involved rather than having a totally legal prohibition. On the other hand, most people think in most circumstances that abortion is wrong and that it shouldn't be done. So the abortion rate is going down in America. It's still very much too high, and we've tried to do some things to make adoption more attractive. And there was a law signed last year, that's gotten almost no notice because it was part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, to try to remove the prohibitions or the discriminations in courts across the country in cross-racial adoptions to try to do whatever we could to just encourage more adoptions. But let me back up to your question and to explain, if I might, why I don't agree that our position would cause more abortions. There are basically three different approaches, with a zillion different limitations, but three different approaches in this welfare debate. There is the Contract approach which is deny benefits to the second welfare child born out of wedlock. And then this extreme version is deny benefits to any teenager who has a child out of wedlock and to that child for up to 18 years. That's what--then there's the people who say, turn it over to the States and let them do whatever they want, which could include that. Our position is give the States a lot more flexibility, but don't punish the children; take care of their basic needs. And we say don't cut the parents off of public assistance unless, number one, they're bad parents or, number two, they do things which will undermine their ability to either be successful workers or successful parents. So for example, the way our plan works is if you're a teenager and you have a baby, in order to draw the public assistance in a normal way you'd have to stay in school, you'd have to live at home with your parents, and if you lived in a bad home you'd have to live in some other supervised setting. You'd have to cooperate and help identify the father so we could attempt to get the father to pay child support and support the child. If at the end of your education period and training, if 2 years have elapsed and you haven't gone to work, then you would have to go to work if there were a job available. And if you turned down a job, you could lose your benefits. Under their proposal, the second problem is, you'd be cut off after 2 years whether there's a job there or not. So the two differences are, I say cut people off after a limited amount of time if there's a job there. They say cut them off altogether. I say only take benefits away from people if they misbehave as parents or in their own responsibilities. They say if you have a child out of wedlock and you're a teenager, you should never get benefits and neither should your child. I'll leave it to you to conclude what impact that might have on the abortion rate; I don't know. But I don't believe ours would. I think ours is responsible. You have to have more requirements on people; you can't just continue to perpetuate the present system. But I don't think you should punish the children or punish people for their past mistakes. You should deal with their present conduct. Child Health and Welfare”