John McCain’s favorite female literary character must be Blanch DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Street Car Named Desire as she epitomizes his entire economic plan for women.

McCain does not believe in legislation to protect women’s rights. Instead, as his record shows, he asks all women to live by the same life philosophy as broken, insecure, penniless, raped Blanch DuBois, who explained, “I have always relied on the kindness of strangers” to get by.

McCain claims to favor pay equity but opposed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as recently as April 2008. Although he skipped the Fair Pay Act vote, he spoke out against it. According to McCain, “[women] need the education and training…,” but apparently not legal protection against pay discrimination.

According to a campaign aide, McCain claims to oppose all legislative mandates. (Wonder what McCain thinks of mandates like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 or the Nineteenth Amendment?)

McCain also opposes legislation requiring insurance plans that cover Viagra to also cover contraceptives. Enabling men to have sex but not helping women to protect against pregnancy must be a mandate issue for McCain.

In 2003 and 2005, McCain voted against measures that would have required insurance companies to cover birth control. McCain voted to reduce, eliminate or restrict health insurance programs for low-income children and pregnant women, a minimum of six times. In August 2007, McCain again voted against expanding coverage of SCHIP (the federal government State Children’s Health Insurance Program.).

Viagra, no birth control, more children, no insurance…must be a mandate thing.

In 2000, McCain voted against providing tax credits to small businesses that offer health insurance to their employees—women represent the largest growing sector of small business owners. He voted against a $3,000 tax credit to help seniors and their families cover long-term care—women statistically outlive their spouses and are the caregivers.

Twice McCain voted against measures that provided additional funding for home and community-based healthcare providers—a profession dominated by women; 18 times McCain voted to cut or restrict Medicare, and seven times to cut or restrict funding for Medicaid—poverty rates are highest for families headed by single women, and the number of women living in poverty has increased disproportionately to the number of men over the past decade.

A spokesperson for McCain has said he will have the most women appointees of any president to date if he is elected—which is great, but…McCain does not believe in quotas so he won’t be “man-dating” parity for business or government.

McCain’s refusal to legislate forces American women to—quite literally—rely on the kindness of strangers. Without legislation, there are no guarantees, and McCain must know that.

McCain’s moderate reputation and choice of a female running-mate doesn’t mean that he is a friend of choice.

His record in the Senate leaves no doubt. The National Right to Life Committee has supported McCain in every one of his Senate races.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America affirms that McCain has always been considered anti-choice.

“He voted against family planning, he voted against the freedom of access to clinic entrances — that was about violence against women in clinics,” Keenan says, adding, “He voted against funding for teen pregnancy-prevention programs, and making sure that abstinence only was medically accurate. This is very, very extreme.”

His running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, is also strongly anti-choice.  She is a member of Feminists for Life and in 2002, when she was running for lieutenant governor, “Palin sent an e-mail to the anti-abortion Alaska Right to Life Board saying she was as ‘pro-life as any candidate can be’ and has ‘adamantly supported our cause since I first understood, as a child, the atrocity of abortion.’”

From the New York Times

The Bush administration is developing a regulation that would define abortion as “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation,” the New York Times reports. The draft proposal leaked to the Times also would require all recipients of aid from HHS to certify they will not refuse to hire health care workers who object to abortion and certain types of birth control.

According to the Times, to receive funding under any program administered by HHS, researchers, clinics, medical schools and hospitals would have to sign “written certifications” that they will not discriminate against people who object to abortion or certain contraception. The certification also would be required of state and local governments when allocating grants to hospitals and other institutions that have policies against providing abortions, the Times reports. The administration said it could discontinue federal aid to individuals or entities that discriminate against people who oppose abortion on the basis of “religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The leaked proposal — which circulated in HHS on Monday — said the new requirement is needed to guarantee that federal funds do not “support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.” The proposal also expresses concern about state laws that require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape survivors who request it, according to the Times.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in a letter to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt wrote that the “most troubling aspect of the proposed rules is the overly broad definition of ‘abortion,'” which would allow medical providers to classify common contraception as abortion and be allowed to refuse to provide it. “As a consequence, these draft regulations could disrupt state laws securing women’s access to birth control,” endanger federal programs such as Medicaid and Title X, as well as “undermine state laws that ensure survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms,” Clinton and Murray wrote. They added, “We strongly urge you to reconsider these regulations before they are released. We are extremely concerned by this proposal’s potential to affect millions of women’s reproductive health” (Clinton/Murray release, 7/16). You can read the letter here.

There are some major anti-abortion protests happening in Atlanta right now, in an effort to shut down clinics in the area.  The Feminist Majority Foundation is seeking support to help keep the clinics open and help protect choice for women all over the country.

We blogged about this back in February, and now the supreme court in Kansas has reached a decision.  Late term abortions do not violate any laws.  You can read this story over at ABC News:

A Kansas grand jury declined Wednesday to indict one of the nation’s few late-term abortion providers, saying it did not find enough evidence to indict him on any crime related to abortion laws.

While speaking about the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Republican Presidential Nominee and Arizona State Senator failed to mention abortion or Roe Vs. Wade in his speech. Read the article below from the Daily Women’s Health Policy Report:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) failed to mention Roe v. Wade in a speech Tuesday outlining his judicial philosophy at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., the Miami Herald reports. The speech led some abortion-rights advocates to criticize the senator for his lack of “straight talk.” McCain’s campaign also announced its “Justice Advisory Committee,” which will be co-chaired by former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) (Stearns, Miami Herald, 5/7).

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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently spoke with Lesley Stahl on 60 minutes about abortion.  Scalia said that he is against abortion, but finds that there is nothing in the constitution that would forbid any woman from seeking it.  You can read more below, and watch the 60 minutes interview.

When asked about abortion and other topics during an interview with Lesley Stahl on CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia confessed “to being a social conservative” but said it “does not affect [his] views on cases,” USA Today reports (USA Today, 4/25). “On the abortion thing, for example, if indeed I were … trying to impose my own views, I would not only be opposed to Roe v. Wade, I would be in favor of the opposite view, which the antiabortion people would like to see adopted, which is to interpret the Constitution to mean that a state must prohibit abortion,” Scalia said. When Stahl asked, “And you’re against that?” Scalia replied, “Of course,” adding that there is “nothing” in the Constitution to support that view

South Dakota has once again put a measure on the ballot that would ban nearly all abortions, allowing exceptions only in cases of “rape or incest, to save a woman’s life, or in cases of a “substantial and irreversible” health risk of impairment to “a major bodily organ or system.” This is taking away a woman’s right to choose and that’s not ok. Speak out, and let your voice be heard. South Dakota tried to ban abortion before, and we revoked that. Let’s not let that happen again – stop this ban from passing!

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