Endgame for McCain
Posted by Jonathan Birch on August 30th, 2008
Photograph courtesy of John McCain 2008.
I am hugely enjoying John McCain’s 2008 presidential run — and it’s obvious he is too. I love the witty adverts and the non-messianic tone. I admire his gravitas, his experience, his foreign policy convictions and his efforts to clean up Washington. His astonishing gamble on a 44-year old Alaskan beauty queen as running mate only makes me like him even more. Now that’s audacity (or possibly insanity). But can he win? From eight points down? After Barack Obama just wowed an audience of 38 million? For all his strengths, the man can’t work miracles — and perhaps that’s where Obama has the edge.
Filed under: election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on August 30th, 2008
I prefer my youtube entertainment to be more direct.
Not sure that one really counts as “entertainment”… McCain’s views on abortion are questionable, but let’s not exaggerate. Any abortion law would criminalise performing abortions, not receiving them — so he’d want to imprison rogue doctors. And opponents of Roe vs Wade want to make abortion a state-level issue — in many states it would remain legal even if the ruling was overturned.
I suppose what is ‘entertainment’ depends upon your point of view. I am always pleased to see youtube videos that I think make a good point concisely and accessibly.
I don’t think that myself or the National Institute For Reproductive Health are exaggerating. It is true that McCain has explicitly stated that he ‘would not prosecute a woman [who obtained an abortion]‘. Unfortunately, criminalising those who perform abortions criminalises women who self-abort. In the first nine weeks of pregnancy, taking readily available ulcer treatment medication will successfully terminate a pregnancy 80% of the time. Any women who took this, the safest route to an early abortion, would be criminalized. Such women are already going to prison in states where abortions are so difficult to obtain, even though legal, that they chose to self-abort. In 2005 Gabriela Flores was convicted under the terms of South Carolina’s proscription against performing an illegal abortion. She spent 4 months in jail.
That abortion would become a ’state-level’ issue is little comfort. 16 states protect the right to an abortion by law, independently of Roe vs Wade. 6 states ban it. A further 3 have ’statements of policy’ opposing abortion. While 16 states might be ‘many’, this doesn’t seem very comforting to me.
The comfort of (at least) 16 pro-abortion states is that “underground” abortions might not take hold when a legal abortion is never more than a long drive away.
Abortion is of course a minefield. But despite all the poisonous rhetoric it isn’t really a choice between killing babies or imprisoning women. In practice it’s a choice about how eligible the abortion choice should be. Overturning Roe vs Wade would make legal abortion a less eligible choice by making it available more scarcely. This to our eyes is a bad thing.
Even so… perhaps the more important point is that the president can’t do much about it. The ruling’s stood since 1973. It would take a constitutional amendment, which Congress won’t agree to.
It’s nearly 1100 miles from Houston to Pensacola and back. We both know that the least empowered in society, especially Texan society, are not definitely going to be able to travel 1100 miles, even for an abortion. So, OK, there’s some comfort in those 16 states who have protected the right to an abortion by law, but who you are dictates how much. There was an excellent piece in the NYT about how bad life was before Roe vs Wade for a gynaecologist treating underground abortion complications.
I take your point about the president’s impotency on this issue, but I think my original point stands. If you want to praise John McCain’s ‘convictions’, then you need a better answer to his ‘convictions’ concerning the rights of women than ‘they’re questionable *shrug*’.
I did say “foreign policy convictions”
Looking at it now, my last comment doesn’t seem so good. I’m no fan of McCain’s abortion policy. It’s opportunistic pie in the sky to appease the Christian Right. It feeds their deluded dream of bulding a Christian utopia. But to suggest McCain wants to imprison women for having abortions just seems toxic and unhelpful — like suggesting Obama wants fetuses to be killed. I’m always surprised at the bitterness of the debate in the US.
Yeah, I nearly edited that comment to say “‘convictions’ of McCain’s” rather than “McCain’s ‘convictions’” in order to remove the ambiguity, but I thought that it was pretty clear that I realised you were talking about particular convictions of his and that I was implying that if you want to prase some convictions then you need stories about why others don’t cancel them out. But whatever, the smiley was warranted.
I don’t want this discussion to drag on and bore people who’re reading it, but I still think you’re being a little unfair.
I was not suggesting that McCain wants to imprison women for chosing to abort. After all, he has specifically said that he doesn’t. The point I was making was that the full consequences of this ‘pie in the sky’ should be discussed. The point was that when you consider the case of women who self-abort, the pie is even less palatable then when you forget to, or when you haven’t bothered to. I suppose the further point is that it is a habit of McCain’s, from his position of privilege, not to think through the full consequences of his ‘convictions’. This last is also clear from McCain’s comments on abortion during the 2000 primary.
What’s obvious from this dicussion is that the video needed to explain that the question it posed would need answering as soon as Roe vs Wade was overturned. Once this is done I hope it is obvious that the question being posed is not an ‘exaggerated’, ‘toxic’ or ‘unhelpful’ one.
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