Dana Goldstein's blog

Aborting Health Care Reform

2009-08-17T08:00:00-04:00

This article was first published by The American Prospect.

In September 1993, as Hillary Clinton lobbied Congress to pass her health-reform bill, she plainly addressed the looming controversy over reproductive care. "It will include pregnancy-related services, and that will include abortion, as insurance policies currently do," she told the Senate Finance Committee. Conservatives were incensed. But as the history books record, it was industry pressure and legislative malaise that killed Hillarycare, not debate over women's rights.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama did not shy away from the issue of abortion, pledging, "On this fundamental issue, I will not yield." In the context of health reform, though, the president and his staff have been reluctant to directly address reproductive rights. In a March interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody, the White House's chief domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes -- who once sat on the board of Planned Parenthood -- claimed she had never spoken to the president about whether abortion services should be covered under a universal health-care system. "We haven't proposed a specific benefits package or a particular health-care proposal, so we're going to be engaging with Congress to have this conversation," she said. When Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag was asked by Fox News in July whether the public insurance plan should cover abortion, he was vague. "I'm not prepared to rule it out," he said. The president finally addressed the issue himself in a July 21 interview with Katie Couric, in which he bucked reproductive rights groups by saying he would consider deferring to the "tradition" of "not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care."

Perhaps in response to the failure of the Clintons' highly detailed plan, Obama's strategy has been to leave the nuts and bolts of health reform up to the legislative branch, saying only that the resulting bill must fulfill three goals: lower costs, provide Americans with more health choices, and assure quality. That lack of detail has shoved Congress deep into the weeds. Predictably, the president's vagueness hasn't prevented anti-choicers from seizing upon the possible inclusion of reproductive-health services as a vehicle to activate their base against reform. "A vote for this legislation, as drafted, is a vote for tax-subsidized abortion on demand," wrote Douglas Johnson, the National Right to Life Committee legislative director, in a letter to Congress. That message penetrated. At a July 14 press conference, Rep. Joe Pitts, a Republican from Pennsylvania, claimed health reform undermined Americans' "right to life. Let's make it explicit that no American should be forced to finance abortions." As the health-care debate reached a fever pitch in the weeks before Congress' summer recess, Fox News featured daily segments on the threat of "subsidized abortion."

Meanwhile, Obama declared in his July 18 radio address that he would not sign any reform bill that did not include a public health-insurance program. A public plan is central to progressives' goals of lowering costs by giving private insurers real, high-quality competition. A government-funded insurance option might, eventually, serve as the shell for a single-payer health-care system similar to those of Western Europe. But if Congress acquiesces to abortion opponents and passes a public plan that does not provide reproductive-health services comparable to what Americans can purchase in the private market or obtain through their employer, it will be a weaker plan with a smaller constituency. After all, the typical woman spends five years of her life pregnant, or trying to become so, but a full 30 years avoiding pregnancy. Without good reproductive-health coverage and strong buy-in from women -- who use more health care than men -- it is difficult to see how a public plan would gain strength over time.

Contrary to conservative hand-wringing, reproductive rights have been under constant assault in the health-reform debate. At stake is not only whether a potential public plan covers contraception or abortion but also whether existing private health insurers, 87 percent of which currently offer some abortion access, will be able to continue to do so once they are operating within the new health-insurance exchanges. The exchanges will house both public and private plans after reform and will be regulated by the federal government.

This increased government intervention in the health sector both excites and terrifies advocates for better reproductive care. The potential upside is that through a public plan, an expansion of Medicaid, and more competition among private insurers, many more women will be able to afford good reproductive health care. But the potential downside is stark: A politicization of which reproductive-health services insurers can cover, meaning that under anti-choice administrations, abortion and even contraceptive limitations or bans could become the norm.

For millions of American women, insurance-subsidized abortion is already off limits. After Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, one of the religious right's first successes in limiting access to the procedure was the passage of the Hyde Amendment. Since 1976, Hyde has banned Medicaid -- the federal health-insurance program for poor women and children -- from paying for abortions, except in the most extreme cases when a woman's physical health or life is in danger. Medicaid covers 7 million American women of reproductive age, or 12 percent of women in that cohort. Federal employees, members of the U.S. military, Peace Corps volunteers, and prisoners are also barred from using their government health coverage to access abortion.

During a July 14 interview on MSNBC, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, contended that when it comes to abortion and health reform, "what we're trying to do is maintain current policy." Yet because any potential public health plan would be funded by the federal government, what anti-choicers would really like to ensure is that Hyde would also apply to any new public insurance programs.

That isn't likely to sit well with the public. Though past polls have shown Americans are resistant to the concept of "taxpayer-funded abortions," the public seems to see health reform under a different light. According to a poll by the Mellman Group on behalf of the National Women's Law Center, 71 percent of Americans support coverage for reproductive health, including contraception, under a public plan. Sixty-six percent support coverage for abortion in a public plan.

None of the health-reform proposals being considered by Congress explicitly threaten Hyde or the other existing federal bans on abortion funding. In fact, reproductive-health-care advocates reluctantly admit that the repeal of Hyde, although a long-term priority, is not on their current agenda. After all, some Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden, have a history of support for the ban. "Hyde is discriminatory against poor women, and we'd like to see it overturned," says Adam Sonfield, a senior policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute. "But it does not seem to be a political priority right now."

To protect against disruptions in American women's access to reproductive medicine, advocacy groups are recommending that an independent council of medical experts -- not a political appointee -- define which services will be covered by insurance plans participating in the exchanges. Such a commission would likely argue for the inclusion of abortion and contraceptive services. Though politically volatile, family planning is rather uncontroversial in the insurance industry and among public-health experts. For every $1 spent on public family-planning services, the government saves $4.02. The public sector alone saves $4.3 billion in medical costs each year thanks to the family-planning coverage the federal government already provides poor women through Medicaid and Title X. That's because birth control and abortion are simply much less costly than pregnancy.

The final health-reform bill will likely establish a council of experts to advise the health and human services secretary on what benefits should be covered. But in both the House and Senate proposals, the council's power is limited; it is still the HHS secretary who makes the final call. This means that under anti-choice administrations, abortion and contraceptive access could be threatened within the health-insurance exchanges. "The potential there is that many, many women could lose the coverage they presently have," said NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan in July, as hundreds of Senate amendments were being filed on health reform, many of them seeking to prevent abortion coverage.

Another risk is that even if abortion services are covered, health clinics that provide abortion -- such as the Planned Parenthood network -- could be barred from participating in the exchange, meaning they would not be able to offer insured services to patients in either public or private plans. An amendment to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) bill from Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland, would protect the status of clinics, but it attracted opposition even from some Democrats, such as Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who identifies as pro-life.

For many congressional Republicans -- and some of the 19 moderate House Democrats who joined their cause -- fanning the flames of the abortion debate is, at least in part, a tactic for delaying reform. To be fair, some family planning opponents do support the broader goal of universal health care -- the Catholic Church chief among them. But according to Marilyn Keefe, director of reproductive-health programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, "The pressure [on reproductive rights] largely comes from people who don't support the larger health-reform effort."

Advocates were able to ensure that both the House tri-committee bill and the Senate HELP bill made it through committee without any amendments limiting access to reproductive care. But as Tina Tchen, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, told a July 15 Planned Parenthood conference -- perhaps in an effort to tamp down expectations -- "That was not easy. It was not easy in committee. It won't be easy to hold on the House floor. It won't be easy to hold on the Senate floor."

Women's organizations find themselves in the strange position of playing defense, even as a pro-choice president sits in the White House and both houses of Congress have pro-choice majorities. "Depending on some of the things that are being proposed, we could be worse off" after health reform than before it, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said at the conference. "That is untenable. Those are some of the tough conversations we're having, frankly, with the White House and Congress. We can't be worse off."

Exit Strategy: Does Withdrawal Deserve Another Look?

2009-05-28T08:00:00-04:00

About a quarter of American high school students receive abstinence-only sex-education, meaning they learn nothing at school about contraception methods. But even among American teens who are offered comprehensive sex-education, there is one birth-control method routinely derided: the withdrawal method -- known colloquially, of course, as "pulling out" before ejaculation.

Students are told that in addition to providing no protection against sexually transmitted infections, withdrawal does next to nothing to prevent pregnancy. Pre-ejaculatory fluid contains sperm that can lead to pregnancy, teens are taught -- despite the fact that clinical studies show this is highly unlikely.

Now a new paper (PDF), published by the journal Contraception, culls evidence from several studies to argue that withdrawal is actually nearly as effective as condoms in preventing pregnancy. The paper reports that couples who practice withdrawal perfectly over the course of a year -- meaning the male partner always pulls out before ejaculation -- have only a 4 percent pregnancy rate. More "typical" couples using withdrawal (those who sometimes mess up) have a pregnancy rate of 18 percent.

Those numbers are very similar to the perfect and typical-use rates for the male condom, which are 2 percent and 17 percent, respectively. The typical-use numbers are based on the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, which sampled 848 women using withdrawal and 3,800 using condoms.

Against the back-drop of a rising teen pregnancy rate and ongoing political fights over the Obama administration's decision to cut some abstinence-only funding, public health experts are sharply divided on the implications of the new paper, especially with regard to sex-education. Some believe teenagers should be encouraged to practice withdrawal in some contexts -- if they don't have a condom, but also if they come from religious backgrounds that eschew hormonal birth control.

But others caution that emphasizing withdrawal's success rate ignores teen boys' relative lack of self-control compared to adult men, and downplays teen girls' need to share control over contraception. Indeed, there is no reliable research on the method's success rate among adolescents in particular. And talking positively about withdrawal takes the focus off condoms, which are the only way to protect against most STIs. "A common situation is one in which the boyfriend doesn't want to use the condom, period," says Heather Corinna, a Seattle-based sex-educator who runs the popular sexuality advice Web site Scarleteen. "This is a pretty easy slippery slope." Corinna says she was conceived by parents using the withdrawal method "perfectly." She laughs, "That's one of the three things my parents agree on!"

Yet the Contraception paper's lead author, Guttmacher Institute researcher Rachel Jones, cautions against relying on anecdotal evidence when assessing withdrawal. "We're constantly told by people in positions of authority that it's not effective. 'Don't use it, it's like playing roulette,'" she says. "But it does substantially reduce the risk of pregnancy. And that's why it should be part of sex-education classes."

Former public school sex-ed teacher Debra Hauser, now executive vice president of Washington-based Advocates for Youth, couldn't agree more. She calls the traditional public health line on withdrawal "a huge pet peeve. I'm thrilled somebody finally did an article like this."

During a recession, it's no small thing that withdrawal is free. What's more, Hauser points out, many teenagers don't know how to access contraception, or are anxious about parents finding out they have bought condoms or obtained a prescription for hormonal birth control. And those who hear abstinence-only messaging in church or at school may have done little or nothing to plan for sex, believing that to do so would be to give in to temptation.

Despite the prevalence of abstinence-only, 60 percent of all American high school students have sex before graduation day, and about 95 percent of Americans have pre-marital sex. Research shows teens who take abstinence pledges delay sex, but do eventually engage in pre-marital intercourse at the same rate as their peers. When they do have sex, however, they are less likely than other teens to use protection.

"When sex is held out as forbidden fruit, young people are not prepared for planning it. It just sort of happens," Hauser says. "If at that point, all you have is withdrawal, then my goodness, withdraw! Unfortunately, if withdrawal is belittled in school, you think, 'Why should I?'"

A Kinsey Institute survey of 18 to 30 year old women found that about 21 percent regularly use withdrawal, most commonly combining it with another method, such as using condoms during the more fertile days around ovulation. High school sex-ed curricula rarely delve deeply into that type of fertility awareness; in comprehensive sex-ed, girls are usually told to be wary of pregnancy on every day of their cycle. But considering that more people may be relying on withdrawal than previously assumed, some sex-educators believe teenagers ought to be introduced to fertility awareness methods as well, which are most commonly associated with married couples who oppose other forms of birth control for religious reasons.

"Religious kids believe contraception is abortion," Hauser says. "Rhythm and withdrawal -- at that point, it's all you have."

TeenStar is a popular international sex-ed curriculum that emphasizes fertility awareness alongside a pro-abstinence, pro-marriage message. According to Hanna Klaus, an ob-gyn and the program's director, TeenStar students are taught to monitor vaginal mucus in order to avoid days of peak fertility. The program is active in 30 countries. Under the Bush administration, TeenStar received funding from both USAID and PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. Yet because it is considered neither abstinence-only nor comprehensive sex-ed, only a few Catholic schools are using the curriculum within the United States.

Though TeenStar does less to promote condoms and hormonal birth control than many comprehensive sex-ed advocates would like, some see possibilities for cooperation with abstinence proponents like Klaus, who will at least discuss contraception with teens. In reality though, the American sex-ed wars have left little space for such common ground. Influential groups such as the National Abstinence Clearinghouse and National Abstinence Education Association oppose giving teens "mixed messages" by discussing any contraceptive methods. Both organizations ignored several interview requests for this article.

As the political consensus shifts away from abstinence-only, debates like this one will likely become more common. Even those skeptical of the reported withdrawal success rates say disagreement over the method provides a perfect opportunity to teach teenagers the kind of critical thinking and evidence-assessment necessary in making health decisions.

"I think everything should be talked about with teens," says Martha Kempner, vice president of SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of America. "The thing we often forget about school-based information is that we're not just giving them the information they need right now. We're giving them the information they need for the rest of their lives."

This article was published by The American Prospect.

Is the GOP a Mixed Choice Party?

2008-06-23T10:20:59-04:00

It wouldn't exactly have been a pro-choice victory if Congresswoman Heather Wilson had won the GOP primary for New Mexico's open Senate seat. In 2006, Wilson told hometown paper the Albuquerque Tribune, "I believe abortion is morally wrong almost all of the time." She supports the Hyde Amendment, which prevents low-income women from using Medicare or Medicaid coverage to pay for abortions. And Wilson is in favor of the Global Gag Rule, which prevents U.S. foreign aid from funding comprehensive family planning efforts abroad.

Nevertheless, unlike her opponent, Rep. Steven Pearce, Wilson opposed a Constitutional amendment banning abortion and supports a woman's right to choose in cases of rape, incest, or when her own life is at risk. Last year Wilson stood up to President George W. Bush's ban on federally funded stem cell research, while Pearce kept in lock step with the president, opposing the life-saving research.

On June 3, Wilson lost to Pearce by 3,000 votes after socially conservative interest groups attacked her stances on reproductive health issues. Once again, the Republican base cannibalized one of its own moderates. And Wilson isn't an isolated case. WISH List, a group that supports pro-choice Republican women running for office, has only one non-incumbent on its federal-level endorsement list for November: Lynn Jenkins, the current Kansas state treasurer. Jenkins is running in a GOP Congressional primary against the highly favored Jim Ryun, a hard-line anti-choicer who served five terms in the House before being booted out of office by pro-choice Republican-turned-Democrat Nancy Boyda in 2006. Among Boyda's reasons for leaving the GOP? Its increasingly hard right stance on social issues.

Compare the uphill battle facing pro-choice Republicans to the recent mini-surge of mixed-choice and anti-choice Democrats. Democrats for Life even has its own signature legislation, the 95-10 Initiative. No equivalent, comprehensive reproductive health bill has been drafted by the dwindling group of Congressional pro-choice Republicans. The organization Republican Majority for Choice won't even publish a list of the politicians it supports online -- after all, that would make it easier for better funded, anti-choice forces to target its few allies.

That's not to say there is no safe haven for mixed-choice Republicans. New England continues to be receptive to such folks; Maine's Sen. Susan Collins is favored for reelection, and the GOP candidate in the state's fist Congressional district is Charles Summers, an Iraq war veteran who describes himself as pro-choice and has already defeated an anti-choice primary opponent.

Nationwide though, the GOP continues to hitch its wagon to divisive, religiously-motivated, anti-choice politics. In order to clinch his party's presidential nomination, John McCain embraced the fundamentalist evangelical and Catholic leaders he once rejected, and changed his position on Roe v. Wade; McCain now says the landmark pro-choice decision should be overturned, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

If McCain can't bring the Christian right base out this November-and there's every indication those voters won't show up at the polls in nearly the same numbers as they did for Bush in 2000 and 2004-McCain's bid will hinge on his appeal to moderates. That will hurt the GOP, not just because poll after poll shows Republican policies on the economy and the war are out of line with the preferences of the American people, but also because middle America is generally pro-choice. A new poll from NARAL Pro-Choice America found that when swing voter women learn about McCain's anti-choice platform, 13 percent of them switch their preference to Barack Obama.

As NARAL political director Elizabeth Shipp told me last week, "At the end of the day, our issue -- choice -- is the one that cuts through, frankly, all the other crap that happens in an election season. The one issue where voters can make a clear and consistent choice very quickly is on the issue of abortion."

The national Republican Party, as well as the GOP electorate in most states, have already made their choice, clearly signaling that politicians who support reproductive rights aren't welcome in their caucus. But in a time of recession and war, it's unlikely that so-called "family values" issues will save the day for Republicans. 2008 may finally be the year when the GOP learns the limits of fear-based campaigning against women's rights.

The New Anti-Choice Democrats: Can We Work With Them?

2008-06-09T08:00:00-04:00

In a campaign TV advertisement, Don Cazayoux, the Louisiana Democrat who won a hotly contested Congressional seat in a May 3 special election, introduced voters to his parents, Don Sr. and Ann. "We thought you should know what he learned growing up," Ann Cazayoux said. As photographs of Don Jr. with babies flashed across the screen, she continued, "We taught him every life is precious." The words "Pro-life" appeared in the bottom left hand corner.

Indeed, trumpeting broad opposition to abortion rights was a key strategy of Cazayoux's campaign. His improbable three-point win occurred in a district where 59 percent of the electorate had voted for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004. Meanwhile, in north Mississippi, Democrat Travis Childers was making a similar case. "Keep this in mind," Childers said matter of factly in one ad. "I'm pro-life and pro-gun." On May 14, Childers, too, was elected to Congress, in a district where 62 percent of voters had supported Bush's reelection. Cazayoux, Photo by Arthur D. Lauck, The Advocate

Though both candidates ran primarily on a platform of creating jobs and providing universal health care, the media was fascinated by their anti-choice stances, calling them "conservative," "Blue Dog" Democrats, despite their strong pro-labor, antiwar positions. In part that's not surprising; the mainstream media has long identified politicians more by their statements on divisive social issues than by their records on more complex economic ones.

But it would be naïve to downplay Cazayoux and Childers' anti-choice ideologies. As a state legislator, Cazayoux voted for one of the harshest anti-abortion laws in the country, outlawing abortion in every case except when the mother's life is at stake -- including in cases of rape, incest, or if the woman's physical or emotional health is at risk. Cazayoux says he'd support similar legislation at the federal level.

Childers, whose previous job was as Prentiss County chancery clerk -- a mostly administrative position -- doesn't have a record on abortion. But when the National Republican Campaign Committee attacked Childers by linking him to Barack Obama's opposition to so-called "partial birth abortion" bans and support for comprehensive sex-ed, Childers hit back hard, claiming he "didn't know" and "had never even met" Obama.

In a reproductive health dream world, pro-choice Democrats would have been elected in Lousiana's eighth district and Mississippi's first. Given widespread anger with the Bush administration and its conservative policies, maybe Childers and Cazayoux could have moderated their abortion positions and still cruised to victory. But in reality, reassuring conservative Southern voters about core social issues was likely the only way Nancy Pelosi could have added these two seats to her total. And by preserving a continued Democratic majority in the House, Cazayoux and Childers, whatever their personal opinions on abortion, ensure that bills restraining choice will largely stay off the legislative docket. The last major Congressional vote seeking to restrict American women's reproductive rights occurred in 2006, when Republicans were still in control.

Of course, pro-choicers want to do much more than just keep existing reproductive rights from being rolled back; we want to expand upon those rights and make them more uniform throughout the country. We want women in cities, suburbs and rural places to enjoy the full range of reproductive health education, information, care, and yes, access to abortion, regardless of their ability to pay, their age, or any other facet of their identity. Can anti-choice Democrats be allies in those goals?

For some of those goals, the answer is yes. Since 2005, anti- and mixed-choice Democrats have been pushing the 95-10 initiative, which seeks to reduce the abortion rate (which is, in fact, already going down) by 95 percent over the next decade. While the plan would expand federal support for family planning and access to contraceptives, it also includes parental notification laws and a ban on certain later-term abortion procedures. Those aren't policies many Democrats who identify as pro-choice will get behind.

But Congressional advocates for reproductive health, as well as pro-choice interest groups, should be aggressively reaching out to anti-choice Democrats on issues such as comprehensive sex education and access to birth control. When it comes to pharmacists' responsibility to provide women with The Pill, for example, even those who support restricting abortion rights can agree that women have the right not to face discrimination when filling a prescription.

This year, House Democrats continued funding President Bush's abstinence-only program. That should change during the next Congress, but it won't be possible without the support of a core group of socially conservative Democrats and socially moderate Republicans. These centrists should agree to put aside their ideology on abortion to ensure that our children's' education is medically and scientifically sound.

On later-term abortions, parental notification, and federal funding for abortion, pro-choicers may need to part ways with the Cazayouxs and Childerses of the world. We should do so respectfully and without alienating them or their supporters. Just by being Democrats from the South, these politicians are giving reproductive rights a major lift. By rebuilding progressivism in that region, they ensure that more Democrats -- some of them pro-choice -- will receive a fair hearing when they run for office. Stay tuned, for example, to Josh Segall, a 29-year old pro-choice Dem running for Congress in a traditionally Republican Alabama district. Candidates like Segall have the potential to de-stigmatize pro-choice politics in the South. But for that to happen, "Democrat" can't be a scary word. Guys like Cazayoux and Childers help make that transition happen.

Anti-Choice Ballot Initiative Watch: 2008

2008-05-20T08:00:00-04:00

Conservatives have long trumped progressives at using the ballot initiative process to circumvent governors, state legislatures, and the courts. By sending paid organizers out to gather signatures from registered voters, they've successfully placed their policy priorities straight onto November ballots, where if they are passed, state legislatures often can't overturn or amend them without super-majorities -- or without going back to the ballot.

In recent years, affirmative action and immigrants' rights have been targeted by the Right for the ballot initiative treatment. Most infamously, California businessman Ward Connerly successfully overturned Michigan's affirmative action policies by giving his quest the misleading name "The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative." This year, conservatives are applying similarly confusing rhetoric to their nationwide drive to restrict reproductive freedom at the ballot box. Here's a primer of what to expect in various states this November.

Directly Challenging Roe

The most ideologically strident of the new anti-choice initiatives are the so-called "Human Life Amendments." If approved at the ballot, these initiatives would amend state constitutions to declare that life begins the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg -- and that the resulting mass of cells has the exact same legal rights as a human being living outside of the womb. The campaign to put "Human Life Amendment" initiatives on state ballots is led by the Thomas More Law Center, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based organization that describes itself as "the sword and shield for people of faith." The group's goal is to directly challenge Roe v. Wade by provoking pro-choice lawsuits, ultimately culminating in a Supreme Court case that would take advantage of the Court's new, more conservative make-up. In practice, the Human Life Amendment would not create new laws or void existing ones, but would provide state legislatures and governors with constitutional backing for laws outlawing abortions and even some forms of hormonal contraception (those that prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, not fertilization itself).

The good news is that of the four states targeted by Thomas More, two of them -- Georgia and Oregon -- haven't allowed the signature-gathering process to move forward. That leaves Colorado and Montana as battle-grounds. In Colorado last week, a coalition of religiously-motivated anti-choicers with the misleading name Colorado for Equal Rights submitted 131,000 signatures in support of placing the Human Life Amendment on the ballot. That's more signatures than are legally necessary. In Montana, where the initiative is called the "Personhood Amendment," the signature gathering process is still underway. There, as in other states considering the proposal, its radical and even illegal nature has split the anti-choice community down the middle. That National Right to Life Committee, a leader in its field, has not endorsed the strategy. And Catholic groups, including the Montana Catholic Conference, have outright rejected it. In a statement, Montana's bishops explained their rationale as such: "Legal experts agree that the current Supreme Court would, at best, decline to hear the case, and at worst, use the opportunity to reaffirm the right to abortion yet another time. The more times the Supreme Court's abortion decisions are affirmed, the more difficult it becomes to obtain further hearings from the Court and to expect decisions to end abortion." (For a June 25, 2008, update on the Montana ballot initiative, click here.)

Targeting Health Care Providers, Infantalizing Women

In this area, there has already been a major victory for reproductive rights advocates. Through a lawsuit, Planned Parenthood stopped a proposed ballot initiative in Missouri that would have made performing an abortion an act of criminal negligence unless a woman was evaluated beforehand for so-called "abortion risk factors." Those factors would have included common psychological and emotional conditions such as depression and anxiety, which very often accompany any unexpected pregnancy -- regardless of a woman's decision on whether or not to seek an abortion. The measure had been pushed by the Eliot Institute, a group that traffics in the scientifically false notion that abortions cause breast cancer and other chronic diseases. In fact, abortion is one of the safest surgeries offered, and is considerably less risky for a woman's health than carrying a pregnancy to term.

Straight-Forward Abortion Bans

In 2006 South Dakota voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have banned all abortions, including in cases of rape, incest, and risk to the mother's health or life. This year, anti-choicers are trying again with a ban that includes those exceptions. They have already gathered enough signatures to place their initiative on the ballot.

In California, anti-choicers are collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would "declare God the creator of life" and change the law so that "abortion after 24 weeks is murder unless necessary to save the mother's life." It's not clear who the initiative's backers believe should be charged with murder: women, doctors, or both?

Parental Notification

Also in California, anti-choicers are gathering signatures to place an initiative on the ballot that would require parental notification for a minor to obtain an abortion. Voters have rejected such measures twice in the past.

Pro-Choice Candidates Fight for Senate Seats

2008-05-06T06:40:00-04:00

Exhausted and stultified by the endless Democratic primary? Gagging a little bit every time you hear that John McCain is a "maverick?" With all the attention paid to the presidential slugfest, it's easy to forget that this November, over a third of the United States Senate will also be up for grabs. While supporters of reproductive rights fervently hope to see the White House back in pro-choice hands, the Senate would act as the crucial check on presidential power should that effort be thwarted. That's because with veto power over federal judicial appointments, only Senators have the ability to stymie a conservative president's attempts to place another anti-Roe justice on the Supreme Court.

Today's Senate Democrats enjoy only a razor-thin 51-49 majority, meaning they can't prevent conservative filibusters or override a presidential veto. And according to NARAL Pro-Choice America classifications, there are currently just 35 strongly "pro-choice" senators and 17 "mixed choice" senators (including majority leader Harry Reid), but a full 48 "anti-choice" senators. That means when it comes to protecting reproductive health and rights, every open seat can make a difference, whether Republican or Democratic. Here are some of the key races to look out for:

Maine
One might think that two-term Republican Senator Susan Collins would be facing a tougher than usual reelection battle this year because of her constituents' frustrations with the conservative excesses of the Bush years. Still, polls show Collins leading her Democratic competitor, Rep. Tom Allen, by over 20 points. "Independent Democrat" Sen. Joe Lieberman has said he will campaign for her.

Collins has always enjoyed support from some pro-choice advocates, and has an 83 percent rating from NARAL. She was one of just three Republican senators to oppose the so-called "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act" of 2003. Collins has also opposed parental notification laws and the ban on abortions on military bases, which Harry Reid supported. Yet she also voted for a dog-whistle anti-choice bill that would have increased penalties for committing a crime against a pregnant woman, under the rationale that the fetus is a second victim. Collins' opponent Allen, on the other hand, enjoys a 100 percent pro-choice voting record.

New Hampshire
At age 43, Republican John Sununu is the youngest member of the Senate. This fall he faces his first reelection battle, but against the same woman he just narrowly defeated in 2002: former Governor Jeanne Shaheen. Sununu has been an ally of President Bush when it comes to restricting abortion access and stem cell research lines, while Shaheen is a pro-choice, Emily's List candidate. Their race is considered one of the tightest in the nation, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, chair of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, has sworn to flood resources into New Hampshire to support Shaheen.

Louisiana
Two-term Democrat Mary Landrieu has a decidedly mixed record on abortion. She supports stem cell research and wouldn't pull Health and Human Services funding from medical service providers who perform abortion. She also wants to lift the ban on performing abortions on military bases. But Landrieu has voted to ban certain late-term abortion procedures. In her first Senate campaign, she was recommended by Emily's List, but the group cut her off in 2002.

Landrieu's opponent is the anti-choice John N. Kennedy, who joined the GOP only last year, after losing a 2004 Senate run as a Democrat. He is currently the state's treasurer. Landrieu is leading Kennedy by comfortable margins in recent polls, but Louisiana has become more Republican in recent years, so the seat is considered up for grabs.

New Mexico
Thirty-six year Senate veteran Pete Dominici, a Republican, is retiring, and every single one of New Mexico's Congressional representatives has announced their decision to resign office in order to run for his seat. That's only three candidates in a small state like New Mexico, but it will still open up a sizable power vacuum. Representing the Democrats is Rep. Tom Udall, who currently represents the northern and eastern parts of the state, including Santa Fe. He has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record.

Republicans Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce will face-off in a June 3 Senate primary. Wilson won reelection to the House in 2006 by just 875 votes, so her central-New Mexico district could be a Democratic pick-up. While she has supported stem cell research and funding for the United Nations Population Fund, she has consistently voted to roll-back girls' and women's access to abortion. Pearce is further to her right, with a 0 percent voting record on all reproductive health issues. Due to his anti-choice record, he has won the endorsement of the Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund, which usually endorses anti-abortion rights female Republicans. Wilson, though, is not radical enough for the group's tastes.

Virginia
After serving since 1979, Republican Senator John Warner is retiring this year. Two former governors are competing for the seat; Republican Jim Gilmore and Democrat Mark Warner, the cell phone mogul who transitioned to a career in politics and flirted with a 2008 presidential run. Warner describes himself as a "radical centrist" who respects "responsible choice." As governor, he opposed a 24-hour waiting period for women requesting abortions and said he would fight efforts to chip away at Roe. Polls show him leading Gilmore by a 15 to 20 point margin.

Minnesota
Democratic comedian and professional conservative-basher Al Franken was leading sitting Republican Sen. Norm Coleman in this race -- but that was before it was revealed that Franken failed to pay over $50,000 in work-related taxes to 17 states. Franken's defense is that he overpaid his taxes in Minnesota and New York, his states of residence, during the years in question, but polls show voters aren't buying it. Coleman is a by-the-book anti-choicer, while Franken is pro-choice and situates his support for abortion rights within his platform for universal health care.

Colorado
Remember Tom Udall, the Democrat running for Senate from New Mexico? His first cousin, Colorado Congressman Mark Udall, is competing to fill the seat of retiring Republican Senator Wayne Allard. Udall's likely opponent is Republican Congressman Bob Schaffler, who has been implicated in the Jack Abramoff ethics scandal. Scaffler is a committed anti-choicer, while Udall has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record. Polling from April showed Udall and Schaffler locked in a dead heat, so this is one to keep to an eye on.

Alaska
Although currently under investigation for corruption and 85 years old, Republican Sen. Ted Stevens will be seeking another term in November. Stevens calls himself "pro-choice," although he has voted to ban certain abortion procedures and supports parental notification. Stevens opposes comprehensive sex education in favor of abstinence-only. He does, however, support stem cell research and the right of abortion providers to receive grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Stevens' opponent is Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, the son of a former U.S. Congressman. They are running neck-in-neck.

So there you have it, eight Senate races to watch in '08, some of them with fascinating implications for pro-choice politics.

Church's Compassion Limited By Ideology

2008-04-22T09:47:21-04:00

As Pope Benedict XVI led a mass of 50,000 people at Nationals stadium in Washington, D.C., last Thursday, Sen. Barbara Boxer became the only national politician to use the occasion of Benedict's visit to protest the Vatican's reactionary politics on reproductive health.

For three days, Boxer held up the vote on a welcome resolution in honor of the Pope's visit. The text had been drafted by Sen. Sam Brownback, a fundamentalist Catholic whose career has been built around support for a Constitutional amendment banning abortion and opposition to even rape victims' right to choose. Brownback's original resolution praised Benedict for "witnessing to the value of each and every human life," a statement Boxer and a bipartisan group of Senators recognized as an unnecessary dog whistle to the anti-choice right. Thanks to Boxer's leadership, the language was struck from the resolution, as was another sentence that claimed religion -- not the U.S. Constitution -- was the "ultimate source" of Americans' "rights and liberties."

Boxer's resistance was but a drop in a sea of pontiff triumphalism. When the typical world leader visits our nation's capital, he or she is forced to answer for policies Americans find troublesome. When Chinese President Hu Jintao met with President George W. Bush in fall 2005 and spring 2006, Bush promised the press he would bring up China's well-documented human rights abuses. American presidents encourage Israeli prime ministers to halt the construction of new Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories, and hold Palestinian leaders accountable for suicide bombings. And no Mexican leader visiting the United States can avoid the topic of stemming the northward tide of illegal immigration.

Those "conversations" often amount to little more than window dressing at a White House state dinner. But during Benedict's visit, there wasn't even a signal or hint of constructive criticism from leading American politicians. Bush, as well as presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama, made uniformly laudatory statements in the Pope's honor.

Of course, it is both appropriate and politically expedient to show respect and admiration for a man who heads a church with which almost a quarter of Americans are affiliated. But Benedict's role surpasses that of an ordinary religious leader; about one-sixth of the world's population is Catholic, and policies decided upon by the Vatican can be a matter of life and death, especially in the developing world. That's why, particularly at a time when Congress is reconsidering the role of contraception in PEPFAR, the United States' HIV/AIDS relief program for sub-Saharan Africa, American leaders should have held Benedict accountable for the Church's continued ban on condom usage.

In practice, the Vatican's rejection of both contraception and divorce can act as a death sentence for young women in the developing world. Writing in Commonweal magazine, an opinion journal edited by lay American Catholics, Dr. Marcella Alsan described her experience tending to AIDS patients in Swaziland:

The typical patient is a young woman between 18 and 30 years of age. She is wheeled into the examining room in a hospital chair or dragged in, supported by her sister, aunt, or brother. She is frequently delirious; her face is gaunt; her limbs look like desiccated twigs. Surprisingly, the young woman is already a mother many times over, yet she will not live to see her children grow up. More shocking still, she is married; her husband infected her with the deadly virus.

This is the reality: a married woman living in Southern Africa is at higher risk of becoming infected with HIV than an unmarried woman. Extolling abstinence and fidelity, as the Catholic Church does, will not protect her; in all likelihood she is already monogamous. It is her husband who is likely to have HIV. Yet refusing a husband's sexual overtures risks ostracism, violence, and destitution for herself and her children.

In poverty-stricken societies where prostitution is commonplace, women have few recourses to protect themselves sexually. By clinging to a contraception ban at odds with the realities of modern life, the Catholic Church bolsters misogynistic cultural norms that say women don't have the right to refuse sex or insist upon having it safely.

Recognizing those facts, priests, bishops, and cardinals in Brazil, South Africa, Belgium, and around the world have implored the Vatican to view condom usage not as unnatural, but as a way to protect the sanctity of human life by preventing the spread of disease. And in the United States, lay Catholics are active in the reproductive health movement through organizations such as Catholics for a Free Choice and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

But Benedict has tuned out those voices. In June 2005, he said that contraception leads to a "breakdown in sexual morality," ignoring the fact that many of the 6,000 sub-Saharan Africans infected with HIV daily are completely monogamous women. And even if an individual has had more than one partner, does the Church really believe he or she deserves to be tormented by AIDS?

Catholic organizations provide about 25 percent of the HIV/AIDS relief available worldwide. For that, the Church should be commended. But until Pope Benedict XVI and the entire Catholic hierarchy embrace the role of condoms in fighting AIDS, Catholic compassion will be limited by ideology. Faith leaders working on the ground have accepted that contraception saves lives. Isn't it time for a brave American politician to ask the Pope why he won't do the same? To do so would not be disrespectful to either Benedict or American Catholics. Rather, it would recognize the Vatican's unique power to influence the lives of its followers around the world.

War With Ourselves: Sexual Violence In The Military

2008-04-08T09:47:00-04:00

The prevalence of sexual violence against American women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is a national shame.

U.S. servicewomen today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. At some Veterans Affairs hospitals, over 40 percent of female patients report having been sexually assaulted during their service, and almost one-third are survivors of rape.

Here in the States, a 2006 investigation by the Associated Press found that more than 100 high school-aged women were sexually assaulted or raped by male military recruiters. "Women were raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams," the AP reported. Many recruiters found guilty of sexually assaulting women faced only administrative punishments, while a recruiter who molested teenage boys was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

These horrific statistics don't even take into account the experiences of American women working for government contractors in Iraq. A recent Nation magazine investigation by reporter Karen Houppert told the story of Lisa Smith (a pseudonym), who was gang-raped in Iraq this past January while working for Kellogg Brown & Root, the former Halliburton subsidiary. Houppert writes:

That dawn, naked, covered in blood and feces, bleeding from her anus, [Smith] found a US soldier she did not know lying naked in the bed next to her: his gun lay on the floor beside the bed, she could not rouse him and all she could remember of the night before was screaming and screaming as the soldier anally penetrated her while a colleague who worked for defense contractor KBR held her hand--but instead of helping her, as she had hoped, he jammed his penis in her mouth.

Over the next few weeks Smith would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp's military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says.

This brutal crime - and KBR's subsequent cover-up - are far from isolated events. Jamie Leigh Jones, who alleges that employees of KBR/Halliburton gang-raped her in Iraq in 2005, founded a non-profit to advocate for women who were assaulted while working as military contractors abroad. Jones' group is working with 40 victims. And a single Texas law firm is representing 15 women with sexual harassment, assault, rape, or retaliation (for reporting a sexual assault) claims against Halliburton and its affiliates.

Some will look at the breadth of the U.S. military's sexual assault problem and conclude that women should not be serving in combat zones. But that ignores the real and impressive achievements of female soldiers, who've stepped up as never before during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in large part due to the growing obsolescence of the military's ban on women serving at the "front lines." Last month, Monica Lin Brown, an Army medic from Texas, became only the second woman since World War II to receive a Silver Star. During a roadside bombing attack, Brown saved the lives of wounded soldiers, running through insurgent gunfire to shield them from attack.

So how can we respect women's military service while simultaneously helping them fight a culture that puts them at serious risk of sexual harassment, assault, and rape? Here are some practical policy solutions:

Increase the DOD's rate of prosecution of sexual harassment, assault, and rape claims. As Congresswoman Jane Harman wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed last week, outside of the military, 44 percent of reported rapes result in an arrest, and 64 percent of those arrests result in a trial. But inside the military, only about 8 percent of reported sexual assaults and rapes lead to a court martial. Under pressure, the Department of Defense reluctantly agreed last year to create a Sexual Assault and Response Office. It must be held accountable and given wide latitude to create training programs that change the military's sexual culture. And every sexual assault victim who comes forward should be given an advocate to represent him or her through the process to a court martial.
Repeal Order 17. Order 17, approved by Paul Bremer, exempts American military contractors from being prosecuted for crimes under the Iraqi criminal justice system. As a result, not a single U.S. contractor has been tried for a violent crime in Iraq, despite overwhelming evidence that contractors have committed atrocities against both their fellow Americans and Iraqi civilians.
Pressure the Justice Department to prosecute the crimes of military contractors. So far, the Bush administration has been mostly indifferent to victims of sexual assault in Iraq.
Disallow work contracts that waive victims' rights to civil and criminal complaints. Halliburton and its subsidiaries have required employees to sign contracts that waive their legal rights, and require all complaints against other workers to be filed through a "Dispute Resolution Program." American courts have disagreed about the legality of the program, but no one should feel pressured to choose between employment and their legal rights.
Require that birth control and emergency contraception be available on military bases. Senators Hillary Clinton, Evan Bayh, Barbara Boxer, Charles Schumer, Tom Harkin, Joseph Lieberman, and Frank Lautenberg have introduced the Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act, which would do just that.
Recruit more female military doctors. One American servicewoman in Iraq was raped by her doctor during a routine gynecological exam. Lisa Smith, the subject of Karen Houppert's Nation magazine expose, only began to come to terms with her rape when she was examined, weeks later, by a female doctor in Iraq. Female medical professionals can be crucial allies for victims.
Foster women's leadership in the military. Research shows that one of the most effective tools for fighting sexual assault in a war zone is a commanding officer who, from the top, signals a zero tolerance policy for misogyny, sexual harassment, and assault. With the proper training, more male officers can implement that goal, but it is only through diversifying the officer corps that the military can truly change its culture into one of intrinsic respect for women.

Even if every one of these policies were implemented, sexual misconduct would likely continue to be disproportionately high in the military, since the culture values aggression and traditional masculinity over conflict resolution and gender equity. Criminal behavior also increases as tours of duty multiply, increase in length, and lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Of course, it isn't just American servicewomen and female contractors who pay the price for the military's sexual malfeasance. In one terrible case, American soldiers confessed last year to gang-raping a 14-year old Iraqi girl and then murdering her and three members of her family. Those soldiers are serving life sentences, and the ringleader of the plot faces the death penalty. But for every sexual assault that is prosecuted, others are never brought to light. Tragically, Iraqi victims have even fewer legal recourses than American women serving in Iraq.

When Obama Voted "No"

2008-03-25T09:48:21-04:00

Gobs of ink have been spilled over Barack Obama's "present" votes on choice issues during his time in the Illinois State Senate. Yes, Obama voted "present" instead of "no" on seven bills that would have limited women's reproductive rights. And yes, Planned Parenthood of Illinois has defended Obama, saying he was acting out a rehearsed strategy for preserving pro-choice seats in the legislature. But while the Democratic campaigns and women's organizations quibbled over which 100 percent pro-choice Senator, Obama or Hillary Clinton, would be the better president for reproductive health, many choice advocates missed what was percolating under the radar: The beginnings of a conservative smear campaign against Obama's very real history of support for reproductive freedom.

The anti-choice anti-Obama strategy is based on Obama's clear "no" votes on the "Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act," or BAIPA. Leading anti-choice blogger Jill Stanek, who testified in the Illinois state Senate on behalf of the bill, has played a key role in disseminating this anti-Obama argument in the right-wing blogosphere. Taking the bait, former presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback, in a fundraising email to supporters of his political action committee last month, excoriated Obama for opposing BAIPA. And in a Feb. 26 editorial, the National Catholic Register fumed, "Obama wouldn't even protect children born alive by mistake during abortion attempts."

But BAIPA isn't really about protecting infants; it is anti-abortion rights legislation crafted by the hard right. BAIPA targets the abortion procedure known as dilation and extraction, which anti-choicers have so successfully re-branded as "partial birth abortion." Dilation and extraction accounts for less than one-fifth of one percent of all American abortions, and is used most often to end wanted pregnancies in which expectant parents learn their baby will not be viable outside of the womb. During the operation, the fetus' skull is capsized inside of the woman, after which labor is induced and she delivers the fetus. It is a wrenching process, but one that allows a woman or couple to grieve and bring closure to a pregnancy by holding the intact fetus. It also decreases scarring, bleeding, and pain inside of a woman's uterus and vagina.

The antis want to redefine these fetuses as "born alive" and require that doctors provide "resuscitation." As a state senator, Obama saw BAIPA for what it was: an ideologically-motivated ploy to vilify women and doctors who choose abortion. On the state Senate floor on April 4, 2002, he explained, "This issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if there are children being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they're looked after."

Of course, the idea that otherwise viable babies are regularly "born alive" during abortions is an invention of the anti-choice movement. Ninety percent of abortions are performed within the first 16 weeks of pregnancy through a procedure called aspiration, in which a surgical vacuum is used to empty out a woman's uterus. The second most common abortion procedure is dilation and evacuation, which takes place in rare cases after 16 weeks of pregnancy, often when a woman's health or life is at risk. Under that procedure, the aspiration process is sometimes preceded by an injection into the abdomen that ensures fetal demise.

So the only abortion procedure that could ever result in an intact fetus outside the uterus is the extremely rare dilation and extraction. The fact that just a few doctors perform just a handful of these procedures in the United States annually hasn't stopped the anti-choice movement from creating an entire lexicon, imagery, and legislative strategy around the symbol of these aborted fetuses. The vocabulary has trickled up into national politics. On the campaign trail, both Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee spoke about aborted fetuses "crying" in pain as doctors cast them aside into a heap. Suffice to say, such scenes are absent from the annals of medical literature. Dilation and extraction is such a rare operation that most hospitals won't perform one in a year, let alone conduct more than one in a day. Such rhetoric is not only divorced from reality, but deeply disrespectful to the many caring medical professionals who perform abortions because they are committed to serving women.

It is to Barack Obama's credit that, as an Illinois state senator, he voted against BAIPA twice, and then, as chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee in 2003, prevented it from advancing to the floor. It would be naïve to believe that a few "present" votes will make social conservatives forget Obama's pro-choice advocacy on this issue. Indeed, they plan to peel moderate and Republican support away from Obama by painting him as a heartless politician who closed his ears to the cries of "abortion survivors." Let it serve as a reminder that supporters of reproductive rights have bigger fish to fry than one another.

Fractures on the Far Right

2008-03-11T09:48:00-04:00

When televangelist and San Antonio mega-church pastor John Hagee endorsed John McCain on Feb. 27, the Republican nominee must have breathed a sigh of relief. Task one for McCain's once-struggling primary campaign had been to build trust among anti-choice social conservative voters, who in 2000 were inundated with smear attacks against McCain, accusing him of being gay and fathering an African American child out of wedlock. (In fact, McCain and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh). The Hagee endorsement was calculated to provide McCain with instant credibility among evangelical Christian voters ahead of the March 4 Texas primary, where McCain faced the last stand of Mike Huckabee, a candidate who made Christian conservatism his calling card by vowing to amend the Constitution to outlaw abortion and same-sex marriage.

Instead, the Hagee endorsement blew up in McCain's face, exposing a key fracture within the Republican coalition: tensions between right-wing Catholics and right-wing evangelical Protestants. Catholic anti-choicers were among the first members of the religious right to flock to the McCain campaign, in part because of suspicions of anti-Catholicism within Huckabee's evangelical movement. Now McCain's Catholic supporters are incensed by their candidate's solicitation of an endorsement from a man who has long derided Catholicism, calling it "the great whore," "the apostate church," and a "false cult system." Despite loud complaints from groups and individuals across the Catholic political spectrum, McCain is refusing to denounce Hagee, saying only that he doesn't agree with all of the pastor's positions.

Of course, Hagee's overheated rhetoric extends to women. "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher?" he once asked. "The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist." And this Hagee tidbit is just right-wing boilerplate: "[T]he feminist movement today is throwing off authority in rebellion against God's pattern for the family."

Opposition to Hagee from the left is to be expected, but dissent among the religious right is a major concern for McCain and the Republican Party in a presidential election year. Catholics, who make up almost a third of the Ameican electorate, are considered a swing constituency in the general election; they preferred George W. Bush over John Kerry by just 5 points in 2004. Alienating Catholics could have serious consequences for McCain's presidential hopes.

Until the Hagee endorsement, right-wing Catholic leaders had been key to McCain's strategy to undo his (largely unearned) reputation as a social moderate. It's true that McCain supports stem cell research, which most anti-choicers oppose. But he has said he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and he supports abstinence-only education and the Global Gag Rule, which prevents U.S. foreign aid from funding contraceptives and abortion in the developing world. McCain even voted against legislation that would require insurance companies to cover birth control right here in the U.S. In March 2007, when a reporter asked McCain if he believed condoms could prevent the spread of HIV, the candidate replied, "You've stumped me. ... I'm not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I'm sure I've taken a position on it on the past."

Of course, McCain hasn't let his ignorance of reproductive health issues stop him from making them a major part of his campaign. As the "Straight Talk Express" rolled from Iowa and New Hampshire into the South, overt attacks on women's reproductive freedoms occupied center stage. To observers who bought into McCain's "maverick moderate" image, it seemed quixotic when former presidential candidate Sam Brownback announced his support for McCain last November. After all, the Kansas Senator and Catholic conservative opposes even rape victims' right to choose. But then a spate of extreme social conservative endorsements showed Brownback knew exactly who he was supporting: McCain is dead serious about governing on behalf of the hard right.

In South Carolina, the campaign trotted out Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn to call McCain "an unwavering voice in Congress for the rights of the unborn." A doctor himself, Coburn supports the death penalty for physicians who perform abortions. In January, McCain attracted endorsements from Cathy and Austin Ruse, a prominent couple in the Catholic anti-choice movement. Cathy is a former pro-life spokesperson for the United States' Congress of Catholic Bishops, and Austin is president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, which lobbies the United Nations in opposition to family planning and abortion services worldwide. "We believe that abortion is the greatest civil rights issue of our day," the Ruses said in their statement of support for McCain. (No word on how the Ruses feel about income inequality or housing and workplace discrimination.) Also this winter, Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a leader in the effort to ban so-called "partial-birth abortions," signed onto the McCain campaign.

With those endorsements, McCain had plenty of anti-choice credibility even before his ill-fated pas de deux with John Hagee. But in his rush to the Bush right, McCain will leave no stone unturned -- even if lurking underneath is the possibility of angering over 60 million American Catholics. Of course, McCain has never been a shoe-in for the Catholic vote; ironically, polls show that like most Americans, Catholics believe abortion should be generally legal. Just more evidence to support the fact that John McCain's views on reproductive health lie well outside of the mainstream.

Related Posts

Cristina Page, The McModerate
Martha Burk, Voter Beware, A Bigger Battle Looms

What's Missing from Democratic Exit Polls?

2008-02-12T08:42:11-05:00

What are exit polls for? When responsibly analyzed, final exit poll results-not the early, leaked numbers that so often misrepresent outcomes-are most helpful in determining not who won an election, but what types of voters supported which candidates.

Exit polls have identified Hillary Clinton's strong showing among women, highly educated voters' affinity for Barack Obama, and confirmed evangelicals' affection for Mike Huckabee. They've also shed light on peculiarities such as John McCain's support among pro-choice Republicans, even in Florida, when the nominally pro-choice Rudy Giuliani was still in the race. Over 40 percent of Sunshine State GOP voters believe abortion should be legal, and McCain won more of their votes than any other candidate in the race. Those folks need a political reality check; McCain's opposition to Roe v. Wade is increasingly vociferous.

But what's usually ignored is that Democratic and Republican exit polls are quite different. Only Republican exit polls ask voters if they identify as "evangelical," for example, obscuring the fact that up to one-third of self-described evangelical Christians actually vote Democratic, regardless of the party's support for abortion rights and LGBT civil rights. And while Republican exit polls typically ask several questions about abortion, Democratic exit polls don't quiz voters about abortion at all.

Yep, you heard that right. The domestic "culture war" issue most identified as a "wedge" is totally absent from Democratic exit polling.

That's because the National Election Pool-the exit polling collective made up of the Associated Press, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox-isn't concerned with polling issue preferences when major candidates actually agree with one another. Indeed, Clinton and Obama have virtually indistinguishable platforms on reproductive health, despite Clinton's longer record advocating on the issue, and all the hang-wringing over Obama's "present" votes on abortion during his time in the Illinois State Senate.

For reproductive health advocates and pro-choice voters, that's a good thing. Both Democratic candidates have pledged to appoint pro-Roe justices to the Supreme Court, overturn the Hyde Amendment (which prevents Medicaid from paying for abortions for low-income women), protect access to contraception, and promote comprehensive sexuality education in public schools. And both Clinton and Obama support abortion and contraception rights alongside a broader parenting agenda, in which the federal government would support mothers and fathers with broadened family and medical leave rights, affordable child care, and better schools.

In other words, Clinton and Obama get it.

So some reproductive health advocates might argue that leaving abortion out of Democratic exit polls is helpful to the cause, since it clamps down on potentially divisive media coverage of abortion around election time. But in actuality, by including questions about abortion on Republican exit polls, but not Democratic ones, pollsters have guaranteed that the media pays extra attention to how conservative, anti-choice voters feel about the issue, while largely overlooking the majority of Americans' support for broad access to abortion and contraception.

In the wake of this past weekend's primary in Louisiana, for example (the only weekend primary to be exit polled), the anti-choice website LifeNews was able to report that three-quarters of Louisiana Republicans oppose abortion rights. And as Huckabee carried Louisiana and Kansas, the media had the exit poll numbers to back up yet another round of stories about his support among social conservative voters. That kept the preferences of anti-choicers in the headlines.

In the meantime, there were no equivalent exit poll statistics on pro-choice voters. Those numbers, if they existed, would likely show strong support across the Democratic electorate for reproductive rights -- after all, in some states, over half of Republicans are pro-choice! Consider this: Although 70 percent of Americans support abortion rights in the case of rape or incest, Mike Huckabee doesn't -- and yet it's Huckabee's supporters whose abortion position is covered by the media. And in 2004's general election, well over half of all voters told pollsters abortion should be legal. Yet during the primaries, the partisan discrepancy in exit polling on abortion completely obscures Americans' relative moderation on the issue.

The fact that abortion is a settled issue in the Democratic primary-at least this year-doesn't meant that polling should ignore progressive voters' preferences on the issue. Indeed, exit polls should ask voters not only about abortion, but about some of the other reproductive health issues that will starkly split the candidates during the general election, such as sex-ed and access to birth control. That would ensure that the public and media have a realistic view of Americans' support for reproductive rights.

Should We "De-politicize" Reproductive Health?

2007-07-30T15:54:27-04:00

Two weeks ago when I live-blogged the Big 3 Democratic campaigns' speeches to Planned Parenthood, a TAPPED commenter chided me for even caring about the distinctions between the candidates on reproductive health. In Roe, the Supreme Court tried to take abortion out of the political realm by calling it a private decision between a woman and a doctor, so "your biggest *enemy* is politicization," the commenter wrote.

Sure, in an ideal world. In the real world, the right to access abortion and contraception has always been politicized. When Margaret Sanger began handing out condoms at her Brownsville, Brooklyn clinic in 1916, contraception was illegal, and she served 30 days in prison for the crime. It wasn't until the late 1930s that, due to the work of Sanger and other activists, very limited contraception was legalized in many states. Today, access to contraception continues to be politically controlled in a number of ways. Some states are passively or actively allowing pharmacists to refuse to provide birth control pills and emergency contraception, even though pharmacists are compelled to provide any other drug that is available and has been prescribed by a doctor. And obviously, the long delay in approving Plan B for over-the-counter access was nothing if not a political game in which women's health advocates scored only a partial victory, since the drug -- which doctors say is completely safe for teenagers -- remains out of reach for women under 18.

I don't want to get too far into a discussion of how abortion has been politicized throughout history, because most of us understand the basics. Abortion has always existed -- women passed from generation to generation painful methods to induce miscarriage, such as herb mixtures and crude surgeries. In early America, abortion was legal before "quickening," or when the fetus can first be felt moving in the fourth month or so. But during the nineteenth century, a rash of states began to criminalize abortion at any point during a pregnancy. Roe appeared late on the scene; in the 1930s, 2,700 American women died annually from botched, illegal abortion procedures, and even in liberal New York City women were hauled in front of grand juries and asked to reveal who had performed their undergound abortion procedures. Today, abortion is politicized in a number of ways: through Supreme Court decisions banning certain abortion procedures, laws limiting when a woman can access an abortion and for what reason, laws compelling women to hear medically inaccurate information about abortion's health "risks" before undergoing the procedure, mandatory waiting periods between when a woman asks for an abortion and when she can receive one, and a federal ban on funding abortions for low-income women who rely on public health plans.

The lack of access to contraception and abortion is everybody's problem, because everybody -- women and men -- can be responsible for and the victim of chance accidents. Yet our legal system treats adult women like children when it comes to reproductive health choices. If you are a man who has sex with women, or any person, really, who is concerned about individual liberties, reproductive justice issues are your issues, too. As progressives, we need to unite behind reproductive justice, not support "de-politicization."

We need a president, Congress, state legislatures, and governors who will actively roll back limitations to reproductive rights, not who will sit on their hands and say, "I won't do anything to further threaten reproductive health." I dream about a world in which women's health choices are de-politicized, but alas, I don't live in one. So until I do, it's something I'll be looking out for in every election. Conservatives certainly are.

Originally published by Dana Goldstein.