McCain on Womens' Issues

There was John McCain, Mr. “Straight Talk,” wriggling on a pin, formulated by a question from a reporter. The question was about remarks made by a McCain campaign advisor, Carly Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett Packard. Fiorina said that: “There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won’t cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice.” The reporter wanted to know if McCain agreed with Fiorina’s comments. McCain hemmed and hawed, and said with a nervous laugh–“I certainly do not want to discuss that issue.”

The reporter explained that McCain had voted against a bill in 2003 that would have required health insurance companies to cover prescription birth control. “Is that still your position?” she persisted. McCain said he had no recollection of the vote. “I’ve cast thousands of votes in the Senate,” McCain said. He finally babbled something about getting back to the reporter.

Today, one occasionally hears comments that some of the women who supported Hillary Clinton for president might now switch and vote for John McCain. Surely they are kidding! It is hard for me to imagine such a reversal. Did such women support Hillary solely because she was a woman? Were they totally oblivious to her positions on the issues? We know that Barack Obama stands for the same principles as Hillary, but do those women think that John McCain stands for the same things as Hillary?

Well, to start off, McCain is opposed to abortion and has said that he supports the repeal of the decision in Roe v. Wade. He has said that as president he would appoint Supreme Court justices like Roberts and Alito. Everyone knows that those justices would be likely to vote to overturn the Roe decision. That is the antithesis of Hillary Clinton’s position. Barack Obama strongly supports a woman’s right to choose, and would never appoint justices like Roberts and Alito.

McCain also vigorously supports the Bush policies on the war in Iraq. That is an important issue for many women who hate the war. Among all Americans, more women (67 percent) than men (54 percent) say that funding for the war should be tied to a troop-withdrawal timetable. Although majorities of both men and women were opposed to sending more troops to Iraq in the so-called “surge,” 56 percent of men opposed the president's plan while 66 percent of women opposed it.

Barack Obama has said: “On my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.” Noting that the Iraqis want us to set a timetable for withdrawl, Obama said: “We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months.” Bush and McCain say that setting a timetable for withdrawal amounts to surrender.

In addition to those two big issues, there are other womens’ issues where McCain and Obama diverge sharply. Obama would require employers to expand family and medical leave, while McCain has said that it should "be subject to negotiations between management and labor.”

Obama backed legislation that would have made it easier for women to sue their employers for pay discrimination. McCain opposed it, saying that: "I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation ... opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems." McCain explained that instead of equal pay protection, women simply needed “education and training.”

In 2005, McCain voted against funding to prevent teen and unintended pregnancies. In 2006, he voted against comprehensive, medically accurate sex education. In 1996 he voted against funding for international family planning. In 2005, he voted against public education for emergency contraception. In 2005, he voted against restoring Medicaid funding that could be used for family planning for low-income women.

You may have wanted Hillary to be nominated by the Democratic Party; so did I. It didn’t happen. Get over it. In many ways, this election is about the rights of women and the disdain of a conservative president and conservative senators and congressmen for those rights. Now is the time to make a decision. Do we move ahead to protect and enhance the rights of women, or do we retreat into the past, diminishing those rights and preserving the backward policies of the rotten Bush years?