Feminists for McCain? Not So Much.

By Katha Pollitt, The Nation. Posted June 23, 2008.

Are there feminist Hillary supporters who hate Obama so much they'll vote for McCain just to show the Democratic Party how ticked off they are? Yes, and I get e-mails from all five of them. Seriously, I'm sure there are female Hillary Clinton voters who will go for John McCain in the general election, but I don't think too many of them will be feminists. Because to vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane. Let me rephrase that: she would have to believe that the chief -- indeed the only -- goal of the women's movement is to elect Clinton, not to promote women's rights. A vote for McCain would be the ultimate face-spiting nose-cutoff. Take that, women's equality!

Not that the media will help women get it. As Eric Alterman and George Zornick exhaustively document elsewhere in this issue, the mainstream press is doing its best to persuade us that McCain is a moderate -- barely distinguishable from Barack Obama -- even on abortion rights, one of the brighter dividing lines between the parties. In the Providence Journal five days after Clinton suspended her campaign, columnist Froma Harrop was typical: "Would McCain stock the Supreme Court with foes of Roe v. Wade? ... The answer is unclear but probably 'no.'" After all, in 1999 he told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board that he "would not support repeal" of Roe because women would seek unsafe, illegal procedures. Since the Democrats will control Congress, Harrop figures, "McCain would probably choose a cipher" rather than get bogged down in the abortion wars. This fake shrewdness, buttressed by much use of "probably," "seems," "may" and "my guess is," has as much value as a bet by a drunk in a bar. We all have our hunches -- usually they magically line up with our wishes and preferences, in Harrop's case, her support for Clinton. By the end of the column she's castigating Obama for his "present" votes on abortion bills in the Illinois Assembly, and by the time she's finished, you'd never know that NARAL and Planned Parenthood give Obama 100 percent ratings and McCain a big fat zero.

How anti-choice is John McCain? Let's leave the psychological tea leaves out of it and look at his record. In his four years in the House, from 1983 to 1986, he cast eleven votes on reproductive issues. Ten were anti-choice. Of 119 such votes in the Senate, 115 were anti-choice, including votes for the ban on so-called partial-birth abortions and for the "gag rule," which refuses funds to clinics abroad that so much as mention abortion. In 1999, the year he said he opposed repeal of Roe on health grounds, he voted against a bill that would have permitted servicewomen overseas, where safe, legal abortion is often unavailable, to pay out of their own pockets for abortions in military hospitals.

His record on contraception and sex education is just as bad. He voted against a 2005 budget amendment, sponsored by Senator Hillary Clinton, that would have allotted $100 million to reduce teen pregnancy by means of education and birth control. He voted to require parental consent for birth control for teenage girls and to abolish Title X, which funds birth control and gynecological care for the poor. He voted against requiring insurance companies to pay for prescription contraception, when they pay for other prescription drugs -- like, um, Viagra. The beat goes on, and on. With a handful of minor exceptions (he voted to confirm pro-choice Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher after voting against pro-choice Dr. Joycelyn Elders), he has a just about perfect anti-choice record, including votes to confirm the Supreme Court nominations of Thomas, Roberts and Alito.

See more stories tagged with: feminism, john mccain, roe v. wade, reproductive justice, abortion, elections

Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Election 2008! Sign up now »