[WND.com  04.24.15]

ELECTION 2016

HILLARY: CHANGE 'RELIGIOUS BELIEFS' OF NATION

Urges overhaul to protect abortion rights, slams Hobby Lobby

CHERYL CHUMLEY 

Cheryl K. Chumley is a staff writer for WND and author of "Police State USA: How Orwell's Nightmare is Becoming our Reality." Formerly with the Washington Times, she is a journalism fellow with The Phillips Foundation in Washington, D.C., where she spent a year researching and writing about private property rights.

White House hopeful Hillary Clinton called for big changes in America's culture, saying "religious beliefs" need to be overhauled in order to make way for birth control, abortion and women's health care.

"Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don't count for much if they're not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper," Clinton said, during the sixth annual Women in the World Summit, the Daily Caller reported.

More to point, she said, "deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed" to give women full access to "reproductive health care and safe childbirth," the news outlet said.

"Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will," Clinton said. "As I have said and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century and not just for women but for everyone - and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States."

Clinton scored one of her loudest ovations when she assailed those "who even play politics with the nomination of our nation's chief law enforcement officer," referring to the delay of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch's confirmation vote.

She defended illegal immigrants, and slammed "those who offer themselves as leaders who would deport mothers working to give their children a better life, rather than risk the ire of talk radio."

"We move forward," she said, "when gay and transgendered women are embraced as our colleagues and friends, not fired from their jobs because of who they love. We move forward when women who came to this country in search of a better life can earn a path to citizenship."

And she slammed Hobby Lobby for its legal battle over the Obamacare mandate, which would have forced the Christian-owned company to provide its employees with contraception coverage.

"There are those who offer themselves as leaders ... who see nothing wrong with denying women equal pay, who offer themselves as leaders who would de-fund the country's leading provider of family planning and want to let health insurance companies once again charge women just because of our gender," she said.

She delivered her speech at the David H. Koch Theater at the Lincoln Center.