“But as Bill said earlier, Roe v. Wade, it’s has been the law for 42 years, and I don’t think we should continue to try to change it. But [what] we can do is defund Planned Parenthood, and by the way, put in place an absolute permanent ban on any taxpayer dollars ever being used to fund abortions.” —George Pataki, during the 5pm GOP debate
“Well, the Supreme Court found a bill [the 2003 partial birth abortion ban] that I was the author of unconstitutional. What did I do? I didn’t stop. I didn’t say ‘Oh, well we lost. It’s the law of the land.’ We worked together. The House and Senate, under my leadership, and we passed a bill, and we said, ‘Supreme Court, you’re wrong.’” —Rick Santorum, 5pm
(As Irin Carmon of MSNBC pointed out, Santorum’s bill, which passed in 2003, was upheld by the court in 2007.)
“But in terms of shutting down the government, I don’t think President Obama should choose to shut down the government simply to send taxpayer dollars to this group [Planned Parenthood] that has been caught, I believe, breaking the law, but also offending our values and our ethics.” —Bobby Jindal, 5pm
(Planned Parenthood did not break the law.)
“Let’s take the money that we would give to Planned Parenthood and put it in women’s health care without having to harvest the organs of the unborn.” —Lindsey Graham, 5pm
“Hillary Clinton lies about Benghazi, she lies about e- mails. She is still defending Planned Parenthood, and she is still her party’s frontrunner.” —Carly Fiorina, 5pm
“I’ve said many a time that that unborn child can be protected, and there are many other alternatives [other than aborting a life-threatening pregnancy] that can also protect the life of that mother. That’s been consistently proven.” —Scott Walker during the 9pm GOP debate
“I have never said that [I favor a rape-and-incest exception for abortion bans]. And I have never advocated that. What I have advocated is that we pass laws in this country that says all human life at every stage of its development is worthy of protection. In fact, I think that law already exists. It is called the Constitution of the United States.” —Marco Rubio, 9pm
“And what happened [to change my position from pro-choice to pro-life] is friends of mine years ago were going to have a child, and it was going to be aborted. And it wasn’t aborted. And that child today is a total superstar, a great, great child. And I saw that. And I saw other instances.” —Donald Trump, 9pm
“The next thing I intend to do is instruct the Department of Justice to open an investigation into these videos and to prosecute Planned Parenthood for any criminal violations.” —Ted Cruz, 9pm
“A lot of people are talking about defunding Planned Parenthood, as if that’s a huge game changer. I think it’s time to do something even more bold. I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifthand Fourteenth Amendments to the constitution now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother’s womb is a person at the moment of conception.” —Mike Huckabee, 9pm
“I joined the Bloomberg Foundation because of Mike Bloomberg’s shared commitment for meaningful education reform. That’s why I was on it. We never had a debate about the budget [which gave millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood]. It was presented and we approved it. Not item by item. Here’s my record. As governor of the state of Florida, I defunded Planned Parenthood. I created a culture of life in our state. We were the only state to appropriate money for crisis pregnancy centers. We expanded dramatically the number of adoptions out of our foster care system. We created — we did parental notification laws. We ended partial birth abortion. We did all of this. And we were the first state to do a “choose life” license plate. Now 29 states have done it and tens of millions of dollars have gone to create a culture where more people, more babies are adopted… My record as a pro-life governor is not in dispute. I am completely pro-life and I believe that we should have a culture of life.” —Jeb Bush, 9pm
