As John McCain and Barack Obama debated abortion, privacy, women's medical decision-making and equal pay, feminist bloggers sounded off on the candidates' positions.

At TAPPED, Dana Goldstein lauded Obama's "smart new rhetoric" of including women's own "religious advisers" in their decision-making on unintended pregnancy and abortion.  She also noted that Obama was unequivocal in arguing that reproductive rights "shouldn't be subject to state referendum" which, Dana points out, they are in this very election cycle, as voters in South Dakota and Colorado decide whether to pass state constitutional amendments that would outlaw abortion. 

Commenters live-blogging at both Feministing and Feministe appreciated Obama's argument the the ultimate decision-maker about abortion is the woman deciding whether or not to have one. Feminist bloggers also loved the transition to Obama's discussion of Lily Ledbetter's fight against pay discrimination.  How did he make the link? In talking about the kind of judges he'd nominate for Supreme Court, Obama said, "I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through. I’ll just give you one quick example. Senator McCain and I disagreed recently when the Supreme Court made it more difficult for a woman named Lilly Ledbetter to press her claim for pay discrimination."

Meanwhile, Ezra Klein noticed that McCain's "furious denunciation" of abortion suggests that he's not quite as casual in his treatment of social conservatism as he's long led voters to believe.  Ezra writes, "Whether it was an act or the product of his general anger or the real thing, he certainly seemed authentic in his furious denunciation of abortion, and when he attacked the "health of the mother" exemption as something that "pro-abortion groups" have "stretched beyond recognition, my hunch is a lot of women in the audience took a second look at McCain on this." (McCain's air quotes around the "health of the mother" probably didn't help any, either.) Echidne of the Snakes concurs: "That John McCain then appeared to ridicule the idea of a health exception for women who want an abortion caused my scales to rise up and my fangs to protrude."

I'll add more reactions from the feminist blogosphere as I find them, and in the mean time, add links to your take below!