NEW YORK — Shortly after she confirmed her bid to secure her party’s nomination for president of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton signaled that advocacy for women’s rights would form the centerpiece of her campaign.

“The full participation of women and girls in society is the unfinished business of the 21st century,” said Clinton, 67, in a keynote address at the 2015 Women in the World Summit last month.

The former secretary of state, who also served as a U.S. senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, presented herself as a crusader for equality between the sexes, in the developing world and in the United States.

“Equal pay for equal work,” “paid family leave” and “a path to citizenship” for women who are undocumented immigrants were among her priorities identified in the speech.

But Clinton also brought up job security for “gay and transgendered women” and took a swipe at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby, the craft-store chain that challenged the Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate.

In the early phase of her campaign, Clinton has given every indication that she will revive the “war on women” drumbeat, which shaped the Democratic Party’s message in the 2012 presidential race, and that she will also embrace President Barack Obama’s strong commitment to homosexual persons’ rights.

Those talking points are expected to be part of a broader crusade for stronger economic rights for women and solutions for middle-class Americans who are losing ground.

Her first campaign video introduced the candidate as an advocate for middle-class Americans but downplayed hot-button issues.

“[E]veryday Americans need a champion. I want to be that champion,” she said in the video.

Though Clinton has yet to present any concrete economic proposals, she is expected to call for investments in bridges and highways, an increase in the minimum wage and reduced taxes for the middle class. Clinton has also endorsed Obama’s executive action that would help an estimated 5 million undocumented immigrants avoid deportation and remain legally in the U.S.

 

Will It Appeal to Voters?

Will her message and accompanying policy proposals help Clinton win her place in history as the first woman to be elected president of the United States? Will Catholic “swing” voters join in sufficient numbers to help her secure that victory?

At this stage, the growing pool of GOP presidential candidates makes it tough to predict an outcome, and voters are still getting reacquainted with the former first lady. But, for now, she has clearly benefitted from the fact that the only other declared competitor in the Democratic primary — Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described socialist — is unlikely to pose a threat.

Yet Sanders’ candidacy also highlights the drift of the party’s base since Bill Clinton was president. Commentators say that Hillary will be under pressure to take a stand on economic and social issues that will mobilize activists but could turn off Independents and moderate Democrats.

“The big story here is that an avowed socialist who voted with the Democratic Party in the Senate, but wouldn’t join it, now feels comfortable seeking its presidential nomination,” noted Charles Lane, a Washington Post columnist, following Sanders’ decision to enter the Democratic primary.

Stephen Schneck, the director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America, describes the party’s ideological shift as “social-justice populism,” and he thinks it will appeal to some swing voters, like “union-hall Catholics.”

But Schneck isn’t sure how Clinton will handle what could be a tough balancing act.

“Her message has generally been ‘Vote for me; I have proven myself with the levers of power,’ but that profile is in tension with the anti-elitism of social-justice populists ... stirring the party now,” he told the Register.

Her campaign will need to harness that populist energy, while reassuring “her existing supporters, who are more motivated by Clinton’s message of competency and professionalism.”

Clinton’s expected leftward tilt on issues related to “income inequality” will be matched by her now-strong support for “marriage equality” and related issues, after many years of ambiguous comments.

“Some of these social-justice populists, for example, despite their support for same-sex marriage, view the issue as more of an elite issue,” Schneck said. “At the same time, many more mainstream Democrats still feel much more obliged to prove their commitment to the LGBT community. So it may be that the more mainstream Democrats will be the more outspoken in their support of LGBT issues in the campaign.”

 

Ethical Questions

Meanwhile, Clinton faces persistent questions about her alleged ethical lapses while serving as secretary of state in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013.

She was been criticized for her exclusive use of a private email account and for permitting a steady flow of donations from foreign governments into the Clinton Foundation, even as she influenced policies that helped or harmed their interests.

“Whether it’s quid pro quo or not, who knows? But the amount of schmoozing involved and crossing lines, and one person putting money in a foundation, and [Bill] Clinton getting unbelievable amounts for his speeches, and then contracts going one way or the other — it’s not good,” Jeffrey Sachs, a top United Nations economist who headlined the Vatican’s recent conference on climate change, told MSNBC.

Further, the Clinton Foundation’s willingness to accept large donations from Saudi Arabia and other Middle-Eastern countries, where human-rights groups say women face pervasive sexual discrimination, could weaken Clinton’s credibility as a trusted advocate for women.

“Even her most strident critics could not have predicted that Mrs. Clinton would prove vulnerable on the subject,” The New York Times reported.

GOP leaders have already begun to criticize her role in an administration that sought to “pivot” U.S. foreign policy to Asia but has failed to effectively counter Islamic extremism in the Middle East, to address the plight of religious minorities under attack from militants and to contain Russia and Iran.

Over the past two years, Clinton’s response to the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi has prompted a series of congressional investigations, and she is slated to appear at two hearings in the next six weeks to answer questions about her private email account and about the White House’s response to the Benghazi attacks.

 

Scrutiny of Women’s Issues Record

Thus far, the one element of Clinton’s legacy that has not drawn much scrutiny is the claim that her advocacy on behalf of women at home and abroad made a positive difference to their lives.

But that record could also come under fire if her pro-life critics are able to broaden the line of inquiry to include her work in China and even the validity of a foreign-policy agenda that makes “reproductive rights” a non-negotiable part of women’s development.

Over the past month, in a series of public forums focused on women’s rights, Clinton has referenced her 1995 speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

There, she electrified the crowd with her blunt criticism of policies and practices that brutalized women in the developing world, from forced abortion to female infanticide and sexual trafficking.

“It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights,” she stated.

Clinton and her allies have framed that 1995 address as a courageous attack on China’s one-child policy, and Hard Choices, her memoir about her years at the helm of the State Department, presents her as a tireless crusader for human rights in that country.

But Steven Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute and a leading authority on China’s population-control effort, raised a number of questions about Clinton’s 1995 speech and her efforts to challenge China’s regime of forced abortions.

Mosher agreed that Clinton’s strong language at the 1995 Beijing meeting had an impact.

“She … did not specifically mention” China’s one-child policy, Mosher told the Register. “But the Chinese stopped broadcasting her speech when she started talking about the issue more generally.”

However, Mosher took issue with Clinton’s subsequent response to China’s population-control regime during her tenure as secretary of state.

“The money to the U.N. Population Fund kept flowing,” he said. “If she was concerned about forced abortion and sterilization, she would have done what [Secretary of State] Colin Powell did. He sent his team to China and found that the U.N. was involved in forced abortion, and they cut off the funding.”

 

Chen Guangcheng

Mosher also raised questions about Clinton’s treatment of Chen Guangcheng, the blind pro-life activist from China who risked his life to document forced abortions in his country.

In 2012, Chen received a visa to the U.S., after he escaped house arrest and sought shelter at the U.S. Embassy.

“In her book [Hard Choices], Clinton claims she was able to extricate Chen Guangcheng from China,” said Mosher.

“But if you read his own account, The Barefoot Lawyer, orders came from Washington to get him out of the U.S. Embassy. He was hustled to a hospital, under Chinese authorization, and his access [to media and family] was restricted.”

“Only after he was able to get a call through to say, ‘I want political asylum’ was he sent to the U.S.,” Mosher added.

“He was abandoned, and if he had not made that phone call, he would be languishing in a Chinese prison camp, if not dead.”

Mosher’s critique of Clinton’s record underscores the pro-life community’s broader problem with an approach to women’s development that places much of the focus on access to contraception and abortion and gives lower priority to economic development.

Hillary Clinton is “focused on the genital/reproductive” issues, Pia de Solenni, a theologian and ethicist who is the associate dean at the Augustine Institute’s Orange County campus, told the Register, calling that a “Band-Aid” approach in poor countries.

“A woman is not poor because she has children. Most often, she is poor because she lacks access to infrastructure, like schools and roads.”

 

Abortion Rights vs. Religious Liberty

It’s not yet clear whether Clinton’s record in China will get an airing during the campaign season. But there is little doubt that her longtime support for abortion rights and more recent criticism of the Hobby Lobby decision will worry Catholics and fire up the base on both sides of the partisan divide.

Clinton has backed abortion rights since she emerged as a national figure, following her husband’s election as president.

“In this pluralistic, diverse life of ours … individuals must be entrusted to make this profound decision, because the alternative would be such an intrusion of government authority that it would be very difficult to sustain in our kind of open society,” she said during her first presidential campaign in 2008.

“I think abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare.”

That stance reflects the Democratic Party’s steady embrace of abortion rights as a litmus test for any national candidate. But the party’s newly aggressive efforts to challenge conscience protections — at least when they are in conflict with the HHS mandate or same-sex “marriage” — could prove more controversial for a candidate who often references her Methodist faith and wants to earn the trust of moderate voters.

In a sign that GOP leaders have pondered the lessons of the 2012 presidential campaign and are now prepared to lead the debate on religious freedom, Clinton has already come under fire for her remarks about religious practices that impede women’s advancement.

At the Women in the World Forum in New York City last month, Clinton told a cheering audience, “Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,” especially with regard to “reproductive health care.”

Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, who is also exploring a presidential bid, viewed that comment as a direct attack on religious liberty, and he came after Clinton about that statement.

“America was founded on religious freedom, and that freedom is woven into the Bill of Rights as the first guarantee,” said Bush in an email message to supporters that receive broad media coverage.

“This shouldn’t be a partisan political issue, but, unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, it sounds like it is.”

 

Time to Decide

Clinton didn’t clarify her religion remarks. But the campaign trail will give her many more chances to pitch her ideas, and “everyday Americans” will have time to decide if Hillary Clinton is the kind of “champion” they want and need.

Russell Shaw, the author of American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America, believes that Clinton should be able to navigate the current political terrain because her “candidacy is based on the fact that she is who she is and that, if elected, she will be our first woman president. That will probably be enough to get her elected.”

Added Shaw, “If the Republicans are to change this, they will have to make a much more coherent, positive case than they have done to date. But, after all, we do have a year and a half to go.”

Joan Frawley Desmond is the Register’s senior editor.