Pro-Choice Voters Need to Take a Look at McCain’s Record

If you are pro-choice, and wish to preserve reproductive rights for women, you need to take a closer look at McCain’s record on reproductive rights and other issues affecting women’s health.

Unfortunately, many pro-choice voters who support McCain prefer not to question too closely where he stands on this issue. Some have persuaded themselves that his present posturing as a far right Republican isn’t “sincere.” In an article in The New Republic, Sarah Blustain writes:

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? “(NR)

Blustain points out that MCain’s views are not in the least ambiguous.

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.”

While it’s true that his views have fluctuated with the political climate,

[T]his 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.” (NR)

Women who are concerned about women’s health, the freedom of women to a degree of control over their reproductive systems, and protecting the freedom of choice of others should therefore be very concerned about a candidate likely to appoint anti-choice judges to the federal bench (not only to the Supreme Court, but to all the federal courts).

Here are some facts to consider:

During his political career, McCain has participated in 130 reproductive health-related votes on Capitol Hill; of these, he voted with the anti-abortion camp in 125. McCain has consistently backed rights for the unborn, voting to cover fetuses under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and supporting the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which allowed a “child in utero” to be recognized as a legal victim of a crime.

He has voted in favor of the global gag rule, which prevents U.S. funds from going to international family-planning clinics that use their own money to perform abortions, offer information about abortion, or take a pro-choice stand.

And he has voted to appoint half a dozen anti-abortion judges to the federal bench, as well as Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. …

….McCain also joined efforts supported only by the radical wing of his party. He voted, for instance, with only one-fifth of the Senate to remove family-planning grants from a 1988 spending bill and with only 18 senators that same year against allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions in cases of rape or incest.

In 1994, the year after abortion provider David Gunn was killed outside a Florida clinic, McCain voted with 29 members of the Senate against establishing penalties for violent or threatening interference outside abortion clinics. Many solidly pro-life Republicans–Mitch McConnell, Kit Bond, John Danforth–voted in favor of the bill, called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) (NR; emphasis added)

Conservatives have taken note of his record.

Conservative writer Charlotte Allen summarized McCain’s congressional career well last year in The Weekly Standard, noting, “[He] has never failed to cast his vote in favor of whatever abortion restrictions are arguably permitted under Roe v. Wade….And, she added, “Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America…consistently award him ratings of absolute zero on their scorecards.” (NR)

Pro-choice voters who have bought into the argument that McCain might not be that bad—and who have convinced themselves that he is misrepresenting his views for political reasons—need to take a hard look at his cumulative record on reproductive rights. (NR)