Viewing Single Post From: Abortion

Viewing Single Post From: Abortion
mynameis	Sep 6 2008, 09:58 PM
Internet Jujitsu Posts: 1,567 Group: Members Member #50 Joined: 01/15/08	Life Sentence by Sarah Blustain Stop kidding yourself: John McCain is a pro-life zealot. John McCain was mad. Fuming mad. It was then the early days of his political career, and he had paid an unscheduled visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Mesa, which was within his Arizona congressional district. That's when Gloria Feldt, then the CEO of the group's local chapter, got a phone call. "Congressman McCain is here," a staffer told her, "and he is screaming and it is upsetting the patients." Feldt says McCain had always refused her offers to visit a clinic, but had apparently decided to make a spot visit of his own. What had raised his ire was a shelf containing information about Title X federal funding, which some clinics receive to support non-abortion-related reproductive health care for low-income women. McCain was upset that the clinic provided paper for people to write their representatives in support of the legislation, which requires constant advocacy because Congress must reauthorize it every year. "His immediate and incorrect assumption," says Feldt, "was that we were using federal funds to pay for lobbying." Feldt got on the phone. "He was screaming, 'I am going to defund her, I am going to get the federal government to defund you.'... [H]e rants and he raves and finally he hangs up on me." Most voters would not recognize that passionate crusader as John McCain. Which is hardly surprising. McCain has spent years manipulating the public's perception of his stance on abortion and reproductive health. He's been against overturning Roe v. Wade and he's been for it; he's embraced the idea of a pro-choice running mate and, more recently, recoiled from it. It's no wonder the public is confused. The right has been twisted in knots for years over whether McCain respects "life" enough to earn its support. And, among Democrats and pro-choicers, the confusion is even greater. Poll after poll shows them unclear on McCain's positions. Planned Parenthood's president Cecile Richards says that, even after McCain secured the Republican nomination this year, long-time Planned Parenthood supporters she met with didn't know the candidate's position on Roe v. Wade. McCain's maverick reputation and his calculated political meanderings on choice add up to one thing: The public thinks McCain just might be a moderate on abortion. The fact that he's not could matter a great deal in the election. According to one poll, about half of all women voters backing McCain said they were pro-choice, including 36 percent who say they strongly support Roe. More importantly, these women voters think that McCain might agree with them on abortion. The same research found that "more than seven in ten pro-choice McCain supporters ... have yet to learn that McCain's position on abortion is directly at odds with their own." And the issue is not that they don't care. One June poll found that, when Democratic women voters in twelve battleground states learned McCain's position on abortion, Obama gained twelve points among them. McCain's views may matter especially to Hillary Clinton supporters, many of whom are pro-choice; according to syndicated columnist Froma Harrop, "[T]hey'll want to know this: Would McCain stock the Supreme Court with foes of Roe v. Wade?" But, she writes, "The answer is unclear but probably 'no.' While McCain has positioned himself as 'pro-life' during this campaign, his statements over the years show considerable latitude on the issue." That, however, is simply not true. There is no "latitude" in McCain's position on abortion. Interviews with dozens of people who have dealt with him on the issue--pro-choice and pro-life activists, Hill staffers, McCain confidants, pollsters, and staffers--along with a two-and-a-half-decade-long perfectly anti-abortion voting record, make that clear. And his record on related issues, like contraception, is no better. "I think it is outrageous that people give him a pass, as they gave George W. Bush a pass," reflects Feldt. "John McCain will be that and worse." The confounding problem with Mr. Straight Talk is that his public statements on abortion have been anything but straight. This meandering began most seriously in 1999, as McCain made his first bid for the presidency. On the eve of that campaign he told the San Francisco Chronicle that he'd "love to see a point where [Roe] is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. ... But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations." That same year, he suggested that Republicans revert to the language of the party's 1980 platform, which affirmed GOP support of a constitutional amendment to defend the unborn, but also "recognize[d] differing views on this question among Americans in general--and in our own Party." McCain said, "I believe we are an inclusive party, and we can be so without changing our principles." He also told reporters that if his then-15-year-old daughter got pregnant, they would make "a private decision that we would share within our family and not with anyone else"--a response that to some ears sounded a lot like code for the right to privacy and abortion. McCain even said he would consider a pro-choice running mate. It was ideologically moderate but politically dangerous positions like these that earned McCain his reputation as a "maverick"--and that got him creamed by the GOP's right-wing base. The National Right to Life Committee helped destroy him in the all-important South Carolina primary, running ads that said, "If you want a strongly pro-life president ... don't support John McCain." So, this time around, McCain has swerved sharply to the right. The campaign website of the same man who, eight years ago, said Roe shouldn't be overturned now says, "John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench." He sent heartfelt words to the National Right to Life Committee's annual convention: "I am pro-life," he told them, "because I know what it is like to live without human rights, where human life is accorded no inherent value. And I know that I have a personal obligation to advocate human rights wherever they are denied ... when we fail to respect the inherent dignity of all human life, born or unborn. " McCain's advisers have said that he will not fight to soften the Republican platform on abortion, and McCain himself has said that it would be "difficult" to choose a pro-choice running mate. more... http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3483eb20-9228-4700-9557-57a47a676e0b


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