McCain Is A Pro-Life Zealot-Voted With Pro-Lifers-125 out of 130 Times

The New Republic
Life Sentence by Sarah Blustain
Stop kidding yourself: John McCain is a pro-life zealot.
Post Date Wednesday, August 27, 2008

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.'... He 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.

.....................

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."

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3483eb20-9228-4700-9557-57a47a676e0b

:wtf: is their problem?!

Use "anti-choice" or at least "anti-abortion". Using the term "pro-life" is accepting their framing of the issue.

Good for the goose should be good for the gander.

You're saying that we can define ourselves as pro-choice instead of pro-abortion, but they have to be defined BY US as anti-choice or anti-abortion instead of pro-life.

Let's just call them pro-fetus. Is that okay with you?


I have been pro-abortion most of my life. I'm finally becoming pro-choice and acknowledging that some women and girls freak out so badly when they abort that they may as well have the choice to bring the child to term, even if it's going to totally flip their lives upside down.

I have fought to be called pro-abortion. I don't want anyone else trying to define my beliefs. But by the same token, I think others should be allowed to do the same.

Anything else is hypocrisy.

except to imply that people who don't support making abortion illegal are somehow less than respectful of life.

Giving in to that RW framing strengthens their position. Why in the world should WE do that?

The neutral phrasing would be anti-abortion. These people who oppose women's rights to their own bodies are not pro-life. They're against a women's rights. That's all.

It's right up there with "Patriot Act". Should we accede to that lie, because the Bush administration would prefer it?

Many of us who support women's right to control their own bodies and make their own personal medical decisions are certainly all in favor of "life".

Anti-choice works better. Anti-abortion if you want to be pretty neutral about it.

But don't adopt their loaded terms.