The left condemns McCain's stand on abortion

From the New Republic:

The right has been twisted in knots for years over whether McCain respects "life" enough to earn its support.

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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."

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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."

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On the eve of that campaign [2000] he told the San Francisco Chronicle that he'd "love to see a point where [Roe] is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary.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."

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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."

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To many voters, the McCain of 2000 is the true McCain, with his latest statements constituting an understandable, if undignified, pander to the GOP's right-wing base. They simply cannot believe that the maverick who defied the party's hard-core social conservatives on embryonic stem cell research and campaign finance reform would toe the conservative line on abortion. But, in truth, it was his 2000 position on abortion that was the outlier--a short-lived attempt to court the center after George W. Bush had locked up the religious right's support. McCain is not, and never was, a moderate.

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. During the Bork hearings, McCain attacked the Court's creation of a right to privacy in Roe v. Wade: "Whether one is pro-or anti-abortion," McCain said in an October 1987 hearing, "it is difficult to argue that the Court's opinion is not constitutionally suspect."

Some of these votes were, politically speaking, no-brainers for anyone vaguely in the pro-life camp. But 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.

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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: bans against partial-birth abortion, abortions on military bases, transporting minors across state lines to obtain abortions behind their parents' backs, and government funding for abortion both in the United States and abroad. ... In addition, McCain has voted to confirm every 'strict constructionist' judge ... appointed by the various Republican presidents who have served during his tenure." And, she added, "Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America...consistently award him ratings of absolute zero on their scorecards."

The record, however, doesn't seem to be enough to convince the electorate that McCain's votes honestly represent his beliefs. But, as I learned on a recent trip to Arizona, people who have known McCain for years confirm that when it comes to abortion, he's a true, if quiet, believer.

My first stop in Phoenix was the office of Grant Woods, who served as McCain's chief of staff during his first term in the House, helped with his campaigns throughout the 1980s, and is now a member of his Arizona Leadership Team. "I am very familiar with his position [on abortion]," reflected Woods, a cowboy-style lawyer, slow-talking and casual, who said that he embraces the true conservative position--that a woman should make her own decision rather than having the government make it for her. "It was one on which I disagreed with him from the beginning." Like many voters today, Woods said he "wondered about the depth of [McCain's] commitment to that position initially because I had the impression that it wasn't something that he'd given a lot of thought to. " But, over the years, he continued, "I was completely convinced that this was a very sincere position that he had thought through and arrived at." Woods recalled a number of conversations with McCain, including one "up in the mountains late at night," in which the lawyer suggested that reasonable minds could differ. "When we really explored it, it really came down [for] him to a sanctity-of-life question. ... He did get very emotional one time we talked about it. He truly believed."

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Moreover, say advocates, he is not open to dialogue. "Whether it's abortion care, birth control, or comprehensive sex education, McCain is not moderate or a maverick," says Donna Crane, policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice America and a key lobbyist on these questions. "We never ask--and we never hear pro-choice Republicans question--whether McCain will be with us on a vote. He's always on the wrong side."

In short, to the pro-abortionists: "McCain is not one of us."

Nuff said.