Ever since John McCain became the Republican Party's presidential nominee, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice groups have been telling everyone who would listen that this senator, once believed to be a moderate maverick, is as opposed to abortion and accessible reproductive health care as George W. Bush is. But even if this long campaign has seen McCain embrace the religious right he once denounced, many may still suspect that McCain isn't out to torpedo abortion rights himself, or to involve himself in private medical decision-making.
Talk to Gloria Feldt [3], and you'll be disabused of that notion. Feldt was the CEO of the Central and Northern Arizona Planned Parenthood in the 1990s, where she met McCain as new senator. After an unannounced visit to her clinic, McCain paid Feldt a call:
He asked no questions, but screamed threats to defund us at the top of his lungs. Like Obama, I listened and didn't take his bait. I finally got him to tell me the source of his ire: a small shelf with information about legislation and post cards so people could write their elected officials if they chose. In addition, it was clear he couldn't distinguish between preventive family planning services and abortion and had no idea what services were provided there.
He simply assumed he was entitled to threaten an organization he didn't like because it was vulnerable to his political clout. But he hadn't done his homework. First, this wasn't a federally funded clinic. Second, even if it had been, you don't lose your freedom of speech as a result; it is perfectly proper to offer non-electoral advocacy information with private sources of money. Third, courtesy of Ronald Reagan, we'd recently been audited and found fully in compliance of those rules by both the General Accounting Office and the Inspector General's office. Fourth, no abortions were performed at this clinic.
Feldt told a similar story to Sarah Blustain, whose reporting for The New Republic [4] revealed the extent of McCain's antipathy to abortion and to women's health. Blustain writes, "McCain has spent years manipulating the public's perception of his stance on abortion and reproductive health. He's been against overturning Roe v. Wade and he's been for it; he's embraced the idea of a pro-choice running mate and, more recently, recoiled from it. It's no wonder the public is confused." But, she concluded, "There is no 'latitude' in McCain's position on abortion. Interviews with dozens of people who have dealt with him on the issue--pro-choice and pro-life activists, Hill staffers, McCain confidants, pollsters, and staffers--along with a two-and-a-half-decade-long perfectly anti-abortion voting record, make that clear."