Tim Kaine's position on the Hyde Amendment contradicts his running mate's. | Getty Kaine faces abortion blowback

PHILADELPHIA — Sen. Tim Kaine’s disagreement with Hillary Clinton on a key abortion restriction is causing blowback from abortion rights groups.

On Friday morning, the vice presidential nominee said that he still supports the Hyde Amendment, which bars taxpayer funding for abortions. But Clinton and many abortion rights supporters in the Democratic Party want to repeal the Hyde Amendment, leaving the running mates at odds on the subject just hours after they sealed their status on the Democratic ticket together.


"I have been for the Hyde amendment. I haven't changed my position on that. I have not changed my position," Kaine said on CNN on Friday morning.

NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue called the statement "deeply disappointing" in a tweet that has since been deleted. "While we appreciate Senator Kaine’s clarification that he will support the nominee’s position on this, we sincerely hope that Senator Kaine will continue to educate himself on what Hyde means to the most vulnerable women in this country and join us in fighting this injustice," a statement included in the tweet said before it was removed.

NARAL released a very similar statement three hours later, adding that the group "fully support[s] Hillary Clinton in her commitment to repeal this law."

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards didn’t mention Kaine by name at first while blasting out several tweets about why the Hyde amendment needs to go. Then she said on Friday afternoon that "While we strongly disagree with Senator Kaine on this point, there are many places where we do agree."

"Planned Parenthood Action Fund will redouble efforts to educate Senator Kaine on the dangerous impact Hyde has on women with public insurance coverage. Supporting Hyde sends the unjust message that low-income women don’t deserve the same access, nor dignity, to make personal life choices as women with private insurance," Richards said.

Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for Kaine, said that while Kaine supports the Hyde Amendment, he has also made it clear that he is fully committed to Hillary Clinton's policy agenda, which he understands includes repeal of Hyde.

Clinton wants it lifted so that low-income women can access abortion care, mostly through the Medicaid program. Finney said Kaine shares those concerns.

"Low income women and women of color too often face barriers to health care, and for this reason he has been a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood and other programs and services that ensure the full range of reproductive health care services for all women," Finney said.

Abortion rights groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and EMILY’s List have been some of Clinton’s strongest allies in her presidential race. Planned Parenthood endorsed her during the primary, the first time the group did so in its 100-year history. She returned the favor by giving her first speech as the presumptive nominee at Planned Parenthood.

The difference is one of the few policy gaps between the presidential candidate and her vice presidential nominee, the other major one being the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Kaine now opposes after praising it earlier this month.

Kaine has long said that he personally opposed abortion because of his Catholic religious beliefs but that he supported the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that protected a woman's right to an abortion, in line with fellow Democrats.

"Kaine has flip flopped his position on taxpayer funding of abortion five times in the last month. This is getting old," said Mallory Quigley, a spokeswoman for the Susan B. Anthony List, which opposes abortion rights.

A Kaine aide said that Kaine's "position has not changed."

The Hyde Amendment is essentially a social issues litmus test in Democratic politics, so much so that it locked up the Senate for weeks in 2015 after Democrats overlooked an expansion of the Hyde Amendment in a human trafficking bill and then repeatedly filibustered it after discovering the error. Kaine supported those filibusters.

Jennifer Haberkorn reported from Washington.