When John McCain made a campaign stop the other day and said “I do not support Roe vs. Wade. It should be overturned,” I thought it was old news. MoJoBlog had already written about how McCain’s new support for criminalizing abortion was at odds with his previous position and that the whole thing was a part of McCain’s attempt to redraw his own image in a more conservative way.
But I want to draw your attention to this post on TAPPED, which makes the case that McCain’s past moderate statements on abortion aside, he’s always been pretty thoroughly a foe of a woman’s right to chose. A snippet:
…it should be pointed out that his record is in fact fundamentally consistent: he’s for it [criminalizing abortion]. He has a 0% NARAL rating. He’s never met a federal abortion regulation he doesn’t like. He voted for Robert Bork, which would have meant Roe being overturned 15 years ago. He favors a constitutional amendment banning abortion. It’s true that he has said that he wouldn’t want his daughter forced by the state to carry a pregnancy to term, but basically all American social conservatism comes with an implicit self-exemption for rich white people, and John McCain’s daughter won’t have a problem obtaining a safe abortion if Roe is overturned.
Fair enough.
Update: I missed this old blog post from Brad Plumer way back in the day. He made all these points a year ago, and added this salient note:
Look: In 2008 this country will elect a new president. Presumably sometime shortly thereafter the 86-year-old John Paul Stevens will retire from the Supreme Court. Replacing Stevens with a pro-life judge would provide the fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Do we really think that as president John McCain, a man who voted without hesitation to confirm Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito despite serving in a pro-choice state—and a man who, as president, would be under unimaginable pressure from conservative interest groups and would need to satisfy “the base” to win re-election—would really nominate a pro-choice justice?
