June 11, 2008

John McCain: The Anti-Moderate

“I do believe that it’s very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should, could overturn Roe v. Wade.”
—John McCain on ABC'S This Week (January 19, 2006).

Planned Parenthood and Brave New Pac have created a video that neatly sums up McCain's record on choice:

 

If you want a breakdown, David Greenberg, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Columbia/Willamette examines McCain's record, which marks him as “among the most extreme members of Congress who voted against common sense measures on family planning, sex education and access to basic healthcare.”

He voted against requiring health care plans to cover birth control (3/22/03).

He voted against comprehensive, medically accurate sex education (7/25/06).

He voted against international family planning funding (3/14/96).

He voted against funding to prevent teen and unintended pregnancies (3/17/05).

He voted against public education for emergency contraception (3/17/05).

And he voted against restoring Medicaid funding that could be used for family planning for low-income women (3/17/05).

It's difficult to see what could be gained from denying people accurate sex education (STDs, unplanned pregnancies) and family planning funding (more children than people can financially support) but needless to say there's a very real risk that if McCain is elected president in November American women's reproductive options will shrink, possibly with tragic results.

Without healthy choices, women will do their best to create their own options as they've done in the past and still do elsewhere. In a recent New York Times article a gynecologist in his my mid-80s speaks about the horrors he encountered before American women were given a legal right to chose. They're not easy to read about and one can only imagine how desperate these women must have felt to go to such extreme lengths to exercise choice in the only way that was left to them.

This is not a fate women should be faced with in 2008.

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