Too bad he can’t get his talk straight on birth control:
Fiorina, the former chief of Hewlett-Packard, left McCain speechless when she seemed to criticize health insurance companies for covering Viagra for men but not covering birth control for women — a point made frequently by abortion rights groups.
“A real, live example, which I’ve been hearing a lot about from women: There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won’t cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice,” Fiorina told reporters at a breakfast talk Monday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, adding, “Those women would like a choice.”
It was a curious statement from one of McCain’s top surrogates, considering the Arizona Republican has voted twice against mandating insurance companies to provide coverage for birth control, once in 2003 and again in 2005. Sen. Barack Obama supports forcing health insurance to include coverage for birth control.
When asked about Fiorina’s comments, McCain said Wednesday, “I certainly do not want to discuss that issue.”
Appearing speechless, McCain paused for eight seconds before answering, “I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer because I don’t recall the vote, I’ve caste thousands of votes in the Senate, but I will respond to you,” he said. “It’s a choice — I hadn’t thought much about it but I did hear her [Fiorina's] response, but I hadn’t thought much about it.”
Apparently.
Later, Fiorina said she was just talking about how McCain’s health care plan would give women more options, saying, “I wasn’t trying to make a veiled reference to the issue of pro-life or pro-choice.”
Except that the anti-choice movement has turned it into a “pro-life or pro-choice” issue. Personally, I’d like to see reproductive health issues taken out of the political realm and qualified instead simply as health care issues (because that’s what they are). But because of the anti-choice movement, that isn’t the case. Anti-choicers have turned contraception into a politicized issue, just like they’ve done to abortion. The fact is that the majority of Americans — including pro-life Americans — support contraception access, and most people — including most pro-life people — realize that it’s a simple, common-sense way to decrease the unintended pregnancy rate (and, from there, the abortion rate). Yet no national “pro-life” group supports contraception access. The religious, anti-choice leaders who retain great influence over the Republican party insist that conservative politicians actively limit birth control access at every turn. And so we get leaders like John McCain, who vote against birth control at every turn, and somehow still manage to be classified as “moderate.”
McCain has never been a friend to women. He has consistently voted against legislation that would greatly improve the lives of women across the country, and around the world. And even if you don’t give a hoot about his record on women’s rights, do we really want a leader who can’t seem to remember what he voted for or against, who deflects tough questions by simply refusing to talk about important issues, and who has a nasty little habit of simply saying “I hadn’t thought much about it” when asked about his views on important issues?
If he’s as strongly “pro-life” as he claims, one would hope that he had in fact thought about birth control at least once or twice — and one would hope that he would come down on the side of supporting birth control use as a way to lower the abortion rate. That does not seem to be the case — and it’s why pro-lifers shouldn’t trust him, and pro-choicers should never support him.
More on McCain and birth control here.
{ 10 comments }
if he wins, he’s pretty much going to f–k all of us over in ALL fields (birth control, economy, the war in Iraq, military spending, taxes, etc)
ugh.
I got the feeling Carly Fiorina was engaged in a little bit of dog-whistling. Just like when it “came out” in 1988 that Barbara Bush was pro-choice and disagreed with her husband — this particular sort of whistle is very calculated; it’s designed to send a specific signal to upper-middle class white women who are both fiscally conservative and pro-choice. The message: our candidate has to say certain things to appease the fundamentalist riff-raff, but in his heart he’s a reasonable guy who understands women ought to be free to do with their bodies as they choose.
These women are itching to vote for a conservative white dude, and they just want a wee bit of reassurance that he isn’t going to really try too hard to stop Summer from getting the abortion she needs when she gets pregnant the summer before starting freshman year at Sweet Briar.
Meghan McCain is being trotted out to give that same dog whistle to the younger set. Hey, it worked in ‘88. Let’s pray it don’t work again, folks.
My plan is just the opposite, it covers birth control and not viagara. I believe that both should be covered. Sex is a very important factor in our lives. We should be able to freely engage in it without having any restrictions placed on it.
Wouldn’t it be a bit dictatorial for the government to force insurance companies to cover any specific type of drug or medical procedure? Shouldn’t insurance companies (or any company) have the freedom to offer specific products/services for specific prices, leaving the consumer to decide if it is a good deal or not?
And since birth control (like any medicine) costs money, won’t the rates go up anyway (meaning that the people will pay for it one way or another)?
It would make more sense to simply make birth control free (directly paid for by the government) instead of strong-arming the companies.
If insurance companies knew they could get a jackpot of female customers by covering birth control, don’t you think they would have done it voluntarily by now?
The U.S. government should offer free contraception/birth control/etc., knowing that if women succeed in life, they will pay a lot more taxes. It makes economic and financial sense too.
In happy, idealistic AmandaLand*, birth control is provided free by the government. That way everyone has no question of access. And when you go to the clinic (or wherever) to get it, there’s education available there as well (in the form of pamphlets, signs, the person at the front desk giving a quick recitation of the key points when they hand it over).
But this isn’t ‘mandaland, it’s the U.S. of A. and here, we put in every barrier we can to obtaining and understanding contraception! Wheee!
*(I have no idea how this would be funded or executed, which is why it’s in my dreamland and not formal policy proposal.)
This reminds me of several disjointed, incoherent, and contradictory in-class presentations given by classmates who failed to coordinate their information into a well-prepared presentation. Reasons for this included everyone doing their own thing and not talking to each other until the day of, tendency of most students in some groups to slack off and rely completely on the hard work of the one or two serious hardworking students, and/or they all slacked off till the last minute and put up the crappy presentation in a panic.
Wonder if this was what transpired in the McCain campaign……WHOOPS!!!
Call me cynical, but I say the whole ‘pro-life’ stance is just a front. What it is really all about, I think, is keeping the cycle of poverty going strong. The exploitive corporatist world we live in requires cheap (re:virtual slave) labor. For this, an overpopulated planet is a good thing. The powers that be WANT unwanted pregnancies as, in the big scheme of things, this keeps power and wealth at the tippy top by sustaining poverty on a massive scale. This is why so-called pro-lifers are also out to limit access to contraceptives–and it’s at least part of the impetus behind the global gag rule.
@professor what if…if this is the plan it is a dangerous plan. The proletariat already out number the ruling class. At some point we will come to class consciousness and the more of us there are the more dangerous the situation will be for them.
“I’d like to see reproductive health issues taken out of the political realm and qualified instead simply as health care issues (because that’s what they are). But because of the anti-choice movement, that isn’t the case. Anti-choicers have turned contraception into a politicized issue, just like they’ve done to birth control.”
Exactly the case; exactly the problem.
@Renee: Who ever said the ruling class was always rational? ;)
Comments on this entry are closed.