Why a Vote for John McCain Is a Vote Against Feminism

In his personal life, John McCain doesn't have the best history with women. And I'm not just talking about his reported use of an Anglo-Saxon word for a certain part of female anatomy to refer to his wife Cindy, in a public place, in front of a group of reporters.

McCain's first wife, Carol Shepp, was, by all accounts, the very picture of an heroic military wife. She raised McCain's first daughter and two stepsons alone as a single parent for six years while McCain was imprisoned as a POW. During her husband's captivity, she was severely injured herself in a car accident that left one of her legs permanently damaged, forcing her to walk with crutches, but she refused to let the military tell her husband she'd been hurt, because she didn't want him to worry about her while he was being held captive.

And when John McCain returned home, he rewarded his faithful wife by running around with a series of younger, physically undamaged women before settling on Cindy, for whom he eventually divorced Carol.

I'm not scandal-mongering, here. McCain's admitted to all this. He's owned up it was a moral mistake. And he's said he's sorry. For what it's worth, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he really is. But when I look at his public record on issues that deeply affect the day-to-day lives of women in this country, I have to say: When it comes to respecting the ladies, John McCain still has a lot to learn. Take McCain's position on the recently defeated Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, for example.

While McCain didn't actually take the time off the campaign trail to vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have extended certain statutes of limitations in order to make it much easier for women to legally challenge employers who unfairly discriminate against them with unequal pay, he openly opposed its passage. When mentioning the Act in a speech he gave to supporters in rural Kentucky back in April, McCain said:

They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else. And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them.

Of course, the problem with this argument is that the Lilly Ledbetter Act was aimed at helping women who already have the same education and training as men in the same business, and are still not receiving equal pay for equal work.

This certainly isn't the first time John McCain has opposed legislation aimed at benefiting women.

In 2005, Senator Hillary Clinton introduced an amendment to a spending bill that would have provided funds to improve women's access to health care, sex education, and contraception, with the stated intent of reducing unplanned pregnancy among teens and poor women, thereby also reducing abortions. Senator McCain voted against this legislation, which failed to pass.

In fact, Senator McCain has stated on the presidential campaign trail that he supports President Bush's abstinence-only sex education policy. (In this 2007 exchange with reporters on his campaign bus, he also infamously stated that he does not know whether certain forms of contraception, such as condoms, can prevent AIDS.) McCain continues to support abstinence-only education despite reputable scientific evidence that abstinence-only education increases the risk of teen pregnancy compared to sex-education programs that teach contraception as well as abstinence.

McCain has also expressed support for the President's policy of denying funds to anti-AIDS initiatives that teach the benefits of condom use in preventing HIV instead of focusing on abstinence. Never mind that this abstinence-focused policy ignores the fact that many women around the world, including many married women, due either to cultural norms or economic realities in their region, have no choice but to consent to sex with partners who may have been exposed to HIV, but may have some say when it comes to using protection.

And rumors abound that McCain may even plan to appoint judges during his term who are opposed to contraception entirely. In a recent speech, when discussing the type of judges he might appoint to the Supreme Court should he be elected president, McCain said, "I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito and my friend the late [former Chief Justice] William Rehnquist," and then criticized former justices for using the words "penumbras" and "emanations," calling those words "airy constructs [...] the court has employed over the years as poor substitutes for clear and rigorous constitutional reasoning."

Watchful women's rights activists have pointed out that the words "penumbra" and "emanations" come from a 1965 Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut to strike down a state ban on contraceptives for married couples. In Griswold, the court found that marital relations fell within a legal "penumbra" that created a "zone of privacy" around married couples' choices regarding the use of contraception to prevent pregnancy. Was John McCain implying in this speech that he plans to appoint Supreme Court justices who oppose the use of all contraception, even in the context of marriage? His careful choice of words sure does seem to me like an attempt at a dog whistle to the extreme conservative fringe of the religious right.

Speaking of women's reproductive rights, let's look at McCain's stance on abortion.

Now, I know this is a hot-button issue that many people feel passionate about, and I'm not trying to start a major debate here on MOMocrats about whether and to what degree our next candidate should be pro-life or pro-choice.

But I think a vast majority of the women in this country would agree that our next presidential candidate, regardless of his personal feelings on abortion, should be pro-women's health. And in that regard, John McCain has recently flipped a big flop.

In the '90s, in trademark "maverick" style, McCain challenged the Republican party hardline stance on abortion. McCain was criticized by religious conservatives for saying the following regarding Roe v. Wade:

I'd love to see a point where [Roe v. Wade] is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force x number of women to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.

However, during his current presidential campaign he's gone from saying he believes Roe v. Wade should be repealed, to saying he supports a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of a mother. And now,  one of his campaign advisers contends he has no plan to change the Republican party platform position on abortion, which currently calls for a constitutional ban on all abortions, period.

As in, no exceptions for rape or incest. And no exceptions for protecting the health or life of a pregnant woman.

Let's think about that for a minute. No exceptions, even for protecting the health or life of a pregnant woman?

Under such an amendment, if a pregnant woman's life (and therefore, unquestionably, the life of her fetus) were in danger, and a doctor, convinced that an abortion was the only way to save her life, performed one to save at least one of two lives, that doctor would be liable to be prosecuted for murder.

A woman carrying an at-risk multiple pregnancy with complications, who would ordinarily be advised to abort one fetus to save the rest, might be forced to let her entire pregnancy fail.

I could go on with nightmare scenarios, but frankly I haven't the stomach for it. Suffice to say that pregnant women and their doctors are sometimes faced with terrible decisions, and I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that it's the government's right or business to make such difficult health care decisions for a woman when that woman's own life may be at stake. And, according to several polls in recent years, the vast majority of voters in this country, even many, many voters who consider themselves to be pro-life, agree with me on this point.

Some might argue that these intimations that John McCain intends to support judges who support making all contraception illegal, and that he'd be willing to back a blanket, no-exceptions constitutional abortion ban, are just pandering to the ultra-religious-conservative base to win an election-- that he'll abandon these ideas once he's in office, and return to a more moderate stance, more in line with mainstream American views.

But even if that's true, what does it say about John McCain's attitudes toward women that he would be so willing to speak against women's interests, and against policies that the majority of American women on both sides of the aisle support, for the sake of a few hundred thousand votes?

When I see some of Hillary Clinton's supporters openly vowing to vote for McCain if Obama wins the nomination, I often wonder how many of those supporters understand that a vote for John McCain is a vote against the core principles of the very movement that painstakingly paved the way for an American woman to come as close to the White House as Hillary Clinton has.

Personally, as a feminist, when faced with the choice of voting for:

1.) A man who has been accused of calling women sweetie, has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood, praises Hillary Clinton for serving as a role model for his daughters, and votes in support of equal pay.

or

2.) A man who has been accused of calling women cunts, who hints that he may support a ban on all contraception, and who tells me that if I think I'm being treated unfairly at work, I must need to go back to school.

I'd vote for that first man. Any day of the week.

P.S. Did I mention that McCain once revealed at a high school question and answer session that he didn't know what LGBT stood for? Yeah. Just thought I'd throw that in, too.

When Jaelithe isn't grabbing third rails with both hands at MOMocrats, she writes about her life as a middle-class suburban heterosexual married stay-at-home-mother (See, Senator McCain? People like that are liberal feminists too!) at The State of Discontent.

Comments

[cynematic]

Standing ovation! A vote for McCain is not only a vote AGAINST feminism, it's a vote FOR misogyny.

Which is why I can't understand why women who claim they're feminists say they'd rather 1) vote for McCain if Obama is nominee, or 2) write-in Clinton (effectively voting for McCain) if Obama is nominee.

Some people have suggested that because most of Clinton's supporters are women over 50 and beyond child-bearing age, that they don't care about women's reproductive health. I reject that line of thought as grossly anti-woman, but I *am* left wondering what accounts for the vociferous declaration by so many online Clinton supporters that McCain will get their vote and not Obama.

[PunditMom]

Absolutely brilliant post! As I've said before, I want them to keep their hands off my "penumbra."

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=27443862&postID=116947775453708094

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=27443862&postID=2793171821303680715

And don't even get me started on the fact that McCain allowed the allegations that he had an "illegitimate" child of color to go unanswered last time he ran for president. The allegations were about his daughter by adoption who was born in Bangladesh. Nice dad.

[Debbie]

Jaelithe, this is a beautifully written post, and I'm grateful for the additional knowledge about the language regarding contraception; didn't know that before.

Your brain is a wonderful thing.

[Summer]

Absolutely brilliant!

[Veiton]

I, also, did not know what LGBT stood for, and I am a sociology minor with many gender courses behind me. Maybe we do not use that term in Arizona.

[jaelithe]

Well, I'm pretty sure people in Arizona do use that term, actually:

http://lgbcom.web.arizona.edu/

But Veiton, you're not a presidential candidate, or a senator. In my view it's a presidential candidate's job to know these things. Whether or not he supports rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, he ought to at least know what they like to call themselves.

[Michelle M]

Great post! This is such a scary scenario. I cannot believe that there are that many people he would have to "appease" on the right that believe birth control should be banned. Even the most ardent conservatives I know would not believe in a complete birth control ban, and they would probably think abortion is acceptable in the cases of incest, rape, or the mother's life.

[the prologue of my life]

"he flipped a big flop"-- you crack me up.

Really well done, Jae. I often find, when I read your posts, that they address issues that have been fleeting in my mind, on which I've wanted more information, about which more needs to be written. And then you write it, and I love you for it.

[magpie]

Great post - well argued, compelling, important.

[Mama Zen]

Excellent post! My concern is that many people are not aware of some of McCain's positions, particularly on abortion.

[Kate]

There is so much information floating around the Internet, that I thought it might be a good idea to put it all in one place, so I created a blog of compiled news stories and videos about McCain and Palin. I understand there is a huge polarization against whatever party a person might be for, and I might not reach the people who really need to see this, but it is my hope that it will help the people who want to know more about McCain and Palin see the truth behind their actions, lies and distortions.

Please check it out at

http://NOSarahPalin.blogpsot.com

Feel free to pass it on!

[kiley]

Maybe Jhon Mccain has messed up a few things he said but Barac Obama has lied about so many bigger things than Mccain has. He didn't go to a church for 20 years and didn't know the priest was a predigest against Americans. Lie! He knew the man who bombed the pentagon but not well. Lie! They found pictures of them together! John Mccains running mate is a women who is beautiful and extremely smart! She has more experience than Obama does! Also for any one who is calling John Mccain old thats a bunch of bull crap Teddy Roosevelt was one of the greatest presidents we had and he was 75.