Once upon a time, in an America far, far away, Senator Joseph R. Biden was considered to be “unreliable” by abortion-rights groups. He was one of those reluctantly pro-choice Democrats, the sort of guy who voted the right way some of the time, but went squeamish when it came to issues like late-term abortion. He even voted to overrule President Bill Clinton’s veto of the partial-birth abortion ban in the 1990s, and stated that while he would not impose his “beliefs” about abortion on America, America had no right to garnish the wages of her citizens to fund feticide.
At least, that’s the version of Joe Biden that we were intended to see. A revealing essay in the National Catholic Register by Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College, Pennsylvania, describes a moment indicating that Joe Biden was always a radical on abortion.
On June 29, 1992, at the Amtrak station in Wilmington, Delaware, a strange scene unfolded. On the platform, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware and Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire saw each other, broke out into smiles. Then, writes Kengor, they “dash into one another’s arms. They can’t stop hugging. They are jubilant, ecstatic—literally moved to tears.” The reason for their tears of happiness was the news that had just come from the Supreme Court: In a 5-4 decision, the Court had upheld the key holding in Roe v. Wade in their latest decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
