Chelsea Clinton first denies and then doubles down on economic argument for abortion

Chelsea Clinton touted the economic benefits of abortion in an attempt to justify the controversial practice, but appeared to deny the claim when challenged before doubling down on the argument on her social media account.

'Pure evil and disgusting'

Clinton denied the characterization of her comments by a pro-life critic of the daughter of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton.

The critic asked for retweets on social media to "let @ChelseaClinton know her comment about aborting children and how it boost [sic] the economy is pure evil and disgusting."

Clinton responded to the criticism on her social media account.

"Hi KrisiAnn," Clinton tweeted. "That’s not what I said as you can see in the video. Reproductive rights have always been economic rights."

"A recent study," she added, "found denying women-often already mothers-a wanted abortion results in years of less employment & more family poverty."

Clinton linked to a study concluding "that not being able to access abortion services makes poor women poorer — it nearly quadrupled the odds that a woman's household income would be below the poverty line."

Clinton did not address the caveat in the article she linked which added, "For committed pro-life readers, science that shows the economic harms to women who are denied access to abortion is heartless, overlooking the obvious loss of life to put a crude monetary value on the natural sacrifices of motherhood."

This was the same criticism many gave against Clinton's original comments.

“It is not a disconnected fact," Clinton said Saturday, "that American women entering the labor force from 1970 to 2009 added three and a half trillion dollars to our economy."

'She's a monster'

Charles C.W. Cooke offered a counterargument at National Review to Clinton's attempt to justify abortion through economic premises.

The problem with this argument, obviously, is that it is entirely unresponsive to the debate over abortion, which is not economic in nature, but moral. If unborn children are not living human beings — and if, therefore, it doesn’t matter if they are aborted — then obviously one will be in favor of abortion, especially if it leads to salutary economic news. If, by contrast, unborn children are living human beings — and if, therefore, aborting them is tantamount to murder — then the utilitarian argument is flatly irrelevant.

Cooke continued to say that Clinton could not have been arguing that the economic benefits of abortion justify the policy, otherwise, "she's a monster."