Thursday's Democratic Debate Was the Ninth Without Any Questions on Women's Rights

She brought up the topic after pivoting from a different question.

ByABC News
April 14, 2016, 11:53 PM

— -- Even though the Democrats have now met on nine different debate stages, Hillary Clinton noted tonight that they have never been asked about women's rights.

The topic actually didn't even come up in a question tonight. It was only mentioned by Clinton, and then by Sen. Bernie Sanders, after Clinton pivoted from talk about Supreme Court nominations.

"We've had eight debates before, this is our ninth. We've not had one question about a woman's right to make her own decisions about reproductive health care. Not one question," Clinton said, to loud round of applause.

A check of the transcripts from all nine debates proves that to be the case. The same is not true for the Republican debates, where the topic of abortion has come up repeatedly.

Clinton went on to criticize "governors doing everything they can to restrict women's rights" as well as one of her potential competitors and her current rival.

"We have a presidential candidate by the name of Donald Trump saying that women should be punished and we are never asked about this and to be complete in my concern, Senator Sanders said with respect to Trump it was a distraction -- I don't think it's a distraction," Clinton said. "It goes to the heart of who we are as women, our rights, our autonomy, our ability to make our own decisions, and we need to be talking about that and defending planned parenthood from these outrageous attacks."

Sanders went on to defend his record on women's rights, calling himself "a senator and former congressman who proudly has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record."