Hillary Clinton gives dire warning on abortion

In a new interview, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Democratic lawmakers’ response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, arguing that “they could have done more.”

“We didn’t take it seriously and we didn’t understand the threat,” Clinton said in an interview with The New York Times. It was released on Saturday. “Most Democrats, most Americans, didn’t realize we were in a fight for the future of this country.”

“We could have fought more,” she added.

The former first lady issued a stern warning in a February interview, arguing that Democrats had for decades denied the possibility of rolling back the abortion rights protected for generations by Roe v. Wade. During that time, Clinton said, the anti-abortion movement was able to chip away at legal precedent until it was too late.

“What I appreciate is that they never give up,” Clinton said. “They’re relentless. They lose, they bounce back, they regroup and they raise more money.”

“The way they do it is incredibly impressive, and we don’t have anything like that on our side,” she added.

The former presidential candidate also slammed the conservative justices on the Supreme Court who wrote the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case, which left abortion rights up to the states, and criticized Senate Democrats, saying they didn’t do enough to block the appointments of those justices.

“There was a sense of complacency on our part, of taking it for granted and thinking it would never go away,” she told The Times in an interview.

Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to former President Trump, said she tried to sound the alarm about the anti-abortion movement during the campaign but was largely dismissed as flame wars. The Times noted that polls and focus groups at the time showed voters didn’t genuinely believe Roe v. Wade was in danger.

With Trump in the midst of his third campaign, Clinton warned that this fall’s election was “existential” because a small minority of conservatives could “continue to turn back the clock on women.”

Following the Alabama Supreme Court decision that has stirred controversy over in vitro fertilization, Clinton warned that birth control would be the next big thing for Republicans who want to restrict women’s rights.

In the same interview, the former secretary also suggested she faced sexism during her election campaign, claiming that female voters had abandoned her because she was “not perfect.”