During Wednesday night's final presidential debate, Hillary Clinton reiterated her support of Planned Parenthood and a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices.
Clinton said she will "defend Roe v. Wade," which "guarantees a constitutional right to women to make the most intimate, most difficult in many cases, decision about her health care that one can imagine." She called out states that are "putting very stringent regulations on women that block them from exercising that choice" and want to defund Planned Parenthood, "which of course provides so many cancer screenings and benefits for women in the country." Moderator Chris Wallace asked Clinton to discuss late-term abortions, and she shared that she has met with women who have had to have one because their "health is in jeopardy" or they were told "something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions. You can regulate if you are doing so with the life and the health of the mother taken into account."
Donald Trump said in response that he thinks it's "terrible if you go with what Hillary's saying, the ninth month, and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. You can say that's OK, Hillary can say that's OK, but it's not OK with me." Clinton sharply rebuked him, saying that is "not what happens in these cases," and said Trump "using that kind of scare rhetoric is terribly unfortunate." Traveling the world as secretary of state, Clinton said she went to countries where "the government either forced women to have abortions, like they used to do in China, or forced women to bear children, like they used to do in Romania, and I can tell you the government has no business in the decision that women make in their families in accordance to their faith with medical advice, and I will stand up for that right." Catherine Garcia
Eleven Americans were injured in Iran's recent missile strike on the Al Asad Air base in Iraq, which President Trump and the Pentagon previously said resulted in no injuries.
The military confirmed Thursday that 11 Americans were treated for concussions after Iran last week struck two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops, The New York Times reports. "While no U.S. servicemembers were killed in the Jan. 8 Iranian attack on Al Asad air base, several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed," a United States Central Command spokesperson told the Times.
Trump last week said "the American people should be extremely grateful and happy," as "no Americans were harmed" in the attack. The attack on the two bases came in response to a Trump-authorized U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
CNN notes that "concussions are not always apparent immediately after they've been suffered," and a defense official told CNN that the Pentagon previously indicating that there were no injuries "was the commander's assessment at the time" but "symptoms emerged days after the fact, and they were treated out of an abundance of caution."
With this in mind, CNN's Jim Sciutto observed that "the crux" of the story "is not the Pentagon mislead," as "these injuries emerged only after the fact," but rather "that the Iranian missile strike was a nearer miss than advertised." Brendan Morrow
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led Friday prayers at a mosque in Tehran on Friday for the first time since 2012, trying to rally support among intertwined crises facing his government. On the foreign front, punishing U.S. sanctions have harmed Iran's economy and the Trump administration's killing of Iran's top general brought the U.S. and Tehran to the brink of war. Domestically, Iranians already angry over a hike in fuel prices took to the streets this week to demand justice and accountability for the Revolutionary Guard's downing of a Ukrainian jetliner, killing 176 people, most of them Iranian.
In nationally broadcast comments from inside the Mosalla mosque, Khamenei, 80, said the missiles fired on the Ukrainian jet were a "bitter accident" and defended the Revolutionary Guard, which reports directly to him. "Our enemies were as happy about the plane crash as we were sad," he said. "Happy that they had found something to question the Guard and the armed forces." He called President Trump, who has been encouraging the antigovernment protests, a "clown" who is only pretending to support Iran's people and would just as soon "push a poisonous dagger" into their backs.
Khamenei also addressed the missile strikes on two Iraqi bases hosting U.S. forces, calling the a "slap on the face" to the U.S. "The fact that Iran has the power to give such a slap to a world power shows the hand of God," he said, but pushing the U.S. military out of the Middle East would be the "real punishment" for America's "cowardly" killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, highlighting Soleimani's efficacy in battling the Islamic State. He added that the killing showed America's "terrorist nature."
"Leading Friday prayers in the capital is a symbolically significant act usually reserved for times when Iran's highest authority wishes to deliver an important message," BBC News reports, citing Mehdi Khalaji at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Peter Weber