Hillary Clinton in The Atlantic

On Abortion: Hobby Lobby decision is slippery slope against women

Clinton was asked about the Supreme Court's hours-old Hobby Lobby decision, and she delivered a fiery and impassioned reply: "I disagree with the reasoning as well as the conclusion," Clinton said. "I find it deeply disturbing. Part of the reason I was so adamant about including women and girls [in State Department efforts] is that they're often the canaries in the mine," Clinton explained. "It is a disturbing trend that you see in a lot of societies that are unstable and prone to extremism. Women's bodies are used as the defining and unifying issue to bring together people--men--to get them to behave in ways that are disadvantageous to women but prop up rulers."

Now, she said, something similar was happening in the US, where religion was worming its way into government. "Many more companies will claim religious beliefs. Some will be sincere, others maybe not. We're going to see this one insurable service cut out for many women," she said. "This is a really bad, slippery slope."

Source: The Atlantic, "Deeply Disturbing", by David Graham Jun 30, 2014

On War & Peace: Not helping Free Syrian Army left vacuum for ISIS to fill

Q: Are we at fault for not doing enough to build up a credible Syrian opposition when we could have?

A: I'm the one who convinced the administration to send an ambassador to Syria. I can't sit here today and say that if we had done what I recommended, that we'd be in a demonstrably different place.

Q: That's the president's argument, that we wouldn't be in a different place.

A: Well, if we were to carefully vet, train, and equip early on a core group of the developing Free Syrian Army, we would, #1, have some better insight on the ground. And #2, we would have been helped in standing up a credible political opposition.

Q: Would we be where we are with ISIS if the US had done more three years ago?

A: The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad---there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle---the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.

Source: Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic Aug 10, 2014

The above quotations are from Columns and news articles in The Atlantic. Click here for other excerpts from Columns and news articles in The Atlantic. Click here for other excerpts by Hillary Clinton. Click here for a profile of Hillary Clinton.
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