Why Republicans' new empathy on gays and immigration won't extend to reproductive rights

What about Rob Portman’s daughter?

Why Republicans' new empathy on gays and immigration won't extend to reproductive rights

BY IRIN CARMON

The analogies started rolling out minutes after Ohio publications went live with the news that Senator Rob Portman now supports marriage equality because of his gay son. “Rob Portman comes out as vegetarian after watching Babe on DVD,” joked one Tweeter. On a more serious note, Steve Benen commented that he’d be happy to introduce Portman to Americans in poverty and to the African-Americans whose votes Republicans are seeking to suppress. He concluded, ”It seems the key to American social progress in the 21st century is simple: more conservatives having more life experiences.”

But here is a life experience Portman already has: He is married to a woman. He has a daughter. So do lots of people who oppose safe and legal abortion and better access to contraception. Some of them are even women. When it comes to reproductive rights, it appears, social empathy goes only so far.

Of all the disparate strategies for saving the Republican party that have been offered so far, almost no one has suggested the party moderate its stance or focus on women’s reproductive rights and access. (I say almost because Dick Morris, to the extent that he counts, declared at CPAC yesterday that “single white women run screaming from the Republican Party, largely because of our pro-life position.” Apparently even in Dick Morris’s fantasy land of Mitt Romney’s landslide win, women of color voting Republican is still a lost cause.) Despite last year’s drubbing of candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, the most we’ve heard so far in the soul-searching is that Republicans need to talk less about rape.

Indeed, possible Party Savior Marco Rubio seemed to be making up for his heresy on immigration reform by doubling down on culture war politics. “Just because we believe that life – all human life – is worthy of protection at every state of its development does not make you a chauvinist,” Rubio said. He added climate denialism for good measure: “In fact, the people who are actually close-minded in American politics are people that love to preach about the certainty of science with regards to our climate but ignore the absolute fact that science has proven that life begins at conception.”

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http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/what_about_rob_portmans_daughter/