Biden gets testy when asked if he supports any restrictions on abortions, in response to a question from a CNN interviewer, who wondered if he would limit the procedure based on the life of the mother.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Biden said, after the CNN reporter pressed him for his position.
The abortion comments came at the end of the CNN/WMUR Democratic debate Wednesday night, but didn’t top the conversation. Biden was also asked whether he would support abortion in cases where the baby would be born with severe disabilities. He said he didn’t know much about the procedure – “don’t know where I stand” – but that the baby would survive, “with a little work put into it.”
This is not the first time that Biden has gotten testy on the issue of abortion. In his first presidential campaign, he told the New York Times in 2008 that he was open to considering restrictions on the procedure for the health of the mother.
“If she’s in labor, she should be able to have the baby,” he said. “If it’s the mother’s wish” to terminate the pregnancy, “she should be able to do that.”
More recently, however, in a December 2014 interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Biden said he would “have to see what the scientific research is” before commenting on whether abortion should be legal.
“I’d have to look at the science, the studies,” he said. When Maddow pointed out that the issue had become a political football, he repeated that he wasn’t ready to weigh in on the matter.
“I think it’s something you have to look at,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s one of the many decisions that people have to make.”
Biden also told reporter Anderson Cooper and his wife, Jill, that he didn’t want his wife to become a surrogate to carry his child. (Biden’s campaign later apologized for the comment.)
“I’ve been very vocal on the issue of choice in this country,” he said
