Liberals face double standard on abortion, Clinton argues

WASHINGTON -- Former president Bill Clinton, defending statements on abortion by his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, said yesterday that Democrats are held to a double standard.

The comment came during remarks to Campus Progress, a left-leaning student group. He said young people in the Democratic Party should speak directly to conservative voters.

He contended that Republicans have defined the abortion debate in a way that boxes in Democrats.

''For example, if you're a Democrat and you have sort of normal impulses, you're a sellout, like when Hillary said abortion is a tragedy for virtually everybody who undergoes it [and] we ought to do all we can to reduce abortion," Clinton said.

''All of a sudden," he continued, the media began asking, '' 'Is she selling out? Is she abandoning her principles?' But if [Senator] John McCain, who's prolife, works with Hillary on global warming, he's a man of principle moving to the middle."

''It's nuts," he said.

In Albany, N.Y., in January, a speech by Senator Clinton, a New York Democrat, led to a flurry of speculation by conservatives that she is shifting slightly to the right.

In that speech, she called abortion a ''sad, even tragic choice" and said her husband's administration did a great deal to reduce the number of abortions in the United States.

Conservatives and abortion rights opponents portrayed the speech as a sign that the senator is edging toward the middle with an eye toward the 2008 presidential campaign.

But her supporters said she was merely repeating positions she had stated since her 2000 campaign for the Senate.