Whoopi Goldberg gave some historical perspective on the abortion issue on Tuesday’s episode of “The View.”
“It used to be all about the hanger,” she said. “And in the old days, the reason abortion became legal, just in case folks don’t remember, is because people got tired of tripping over women who gave themselves abortions in bathroom, you know, or went to people who gave them Clorox to drink.”
The co-hosts were discussing a bill signed by Ohio governor and Presidential hopeful John Kasich, which will defund Planned Parenthood in that state.
“We have to remember that he’s not taking away any money from women’s healthcare,” Candace Cameron Bure said. “So the money that would have gone to women’s organizations that perform abortions are now being restricted to local clinics that provide all the same women’s healthcare that just do not perform abortions.”
Cameron-Bure also claimed that while some say the government does not fund abortions, states like California provide abortions through Medicare and Medicaid insurance, which is government funded.
“You can’t decide for some woman what she needs,” Goldberg chimed in. “I can’t decide. You can’t decide. None of us can decide for some other woman’s life, and she should have the right to make that decision without getting picketed, threatened, made to feel bad, whatever your religious belief is.”
Cameron-Bure retorted that it was necessary for outside intervention because “the child has no voice. Someone has to have a voice for them.”
But Goldberg fired back that such a stance relied on a number of assumptions about the women seeking out the procedure.
“You’re assuming that that woman who’s making that really hard decision hasn’t thought about that,” she said. “And you’re — not you — but one is assuming that she’s not smart enough to figure it out, that she’s not smart enough to know what she needs in her family, what she can and can’t handle.”