Once conflicted, Biden embraces role as abortion defender

WASHINGTON — Soon after being elected to the U.S. Senate, Joe Biden was pulled aside by a Democratic colleague who wanted to know how he was going to vote on abortion. Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said Biden “understands there’s a difference between his personal view and what he would do in his personal life, and what he and his party stands for in terms of protecting freedoms for the American people.” Although Biden called for protecting Roe v. Wade in his State of the Union speech in March, since becoming president he had never publicly uttered the word “abortion” until this week, when the draft court decision leaked. “If we tried to make this a referendum on abortion rights, for example, we’d lose,” he wrote in his 2007 memoir, “Promises to Keep.” Biden’s handling of the issue was a sharp contrast with colleagues like Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who said in a speech that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions.” “No one could have ever confused then-Sen. Biden with being a culture warrior,” said Jim Manley, a longtime Senate staff member who worked for Kennedy and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. Bork’s nomination was defeated, preventing a rightward shift on the Supreme Court that could have jeopardized Roe v. Wade. Biden became a U.S. senator in January 1973, the same month the Roe v. Wade decision was issued, and he criticized the Supreme Court for going “too far.” When it comes to abortion, he told an interviewer, he was “about as liberal as your grandmother.” However, activist groups at each end of the political spectrum have gained influence within the parties, Swers said, creating a clearer partisan split on the issue. “I don’t think that someone who took the positions that he used to take could run for president now.” During the presidential campaign, Biden also promised to support legislation that would codify Roe v. Wade in law.