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Pro-life or just anti-McCain?
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Jan. 14, 2000 | WASHINGTON --
So why have pro-life political action committees started flooding the radio airwaves of New Hampshire and South Carolina with ads claiming otherwise? To hear them tell it, McCain is Edward Wirehanger-hands, a rabid beast who just can't wait to get his hands on the next available fetus. This despite the fact that John McCain is about as pro-life as it gets. Since he was first elected to the House, in 1982, he's consistently voted that way. He's also sponsored pro-life legislation -- one bill that would make it a federal crime to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion and avoid a parental consent law, for instance. He also introduced legislation prohibiting federally funded health insurance plans from funding abortions.
Tellingly, the ads don't mention McCain's record. Rather, they hang their argument on a thin nail of "evidence" that McCain is pro-choice. And from interviews with members of the pro-life community, it seems rather clear that their intent is to nail McCain, whose campaign finance reform legislation would imperil their power, rather than have a comprehensive and open discussion on the issue. On Sunday in New Hampshire, the National Right to Life Committee's (NRLC) state affiliate, Citizens for Life, began running a radio ad that goes after McCain for an issue that has zero to do with abortion -- McCain's occasional wrestling matches with taste. The radio ad attacks McCain for borderline offensive jokes he's made in the past - one about Alzheimers ("The nice thing about Alzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter eggs") and one calling the retirement community Leisure World "Seizure World." In South Carolina, the ad -- jointly funded by NRLC PAC and its state affiliate, the South Carolina Citizens for Life PAC -- makes a lot of hay about a 1992 McCain vote in favor of overturning the ban on fetal tissue research. The ad, which began running on Monday, bemoans McCain's "flip-flop" on the 1992 ban. A closer examination of the vote shows it is a bad litmus test for pro-life credentials. McCain did indeed flip-flop on what the ad calls "federal funding of medical experimentation that uses the body parts of aborted babies," but predictably the issue is rather murky. In early 1992, McCain opposed lifting the ban, but he changed his mind once he was lobbied by the family of former Sen. Mo Udall, D-Ariz., a mentor to McCain who was suffering from Parkinson's Disease. Scientists researching a cure for Parkinson's depend on fetal tissue research, Udall's family argued, convincing not just McCain, but also staunch pro-lifers like South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, Kansas' Bob Dole, Utah's Jake Garn, New Mexico's Pete Domenici, Florida's Connie Mack and Alaska's Frank Murkowski. "My abhorrence for the practice of abortion is unquestionable," McCain said at the time. "Yet, my abhorrence for these diseases and the suffering they cause is just as strong.'' Exhibit A in the South Carolina ads, however, is a quote from the Aug. 20 San Francisco Chronicle in which McCain says, "I'd love to see a point where (Roe vs. 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 vs. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to (undergo) illegal and dangerous operations." "John McCain wants South Carolina voters to think he's pro-life," a narrator says on the radio ad based on this quote. "But in California, he struck a different pose. Regarding the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion on demand, McCain told editors of the San Francisco Chronicle on Aug. 19, quote, 'Certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support the repeal of Roe vs. Wade.'" Holly Gatling, executive director of the South Carolina Citizen's for Life PAC, accuses McCain of "playing both sides of the fence when he's on the East Coast trying to blow in the ear of Christian conservatives, or on the West Coast pandering to the 'pro-aborts.'" "But what about pro-life South Carolina Republican Rep. Lindsey Graham," I ask. "He's a McCain backer, and he's pro-life and is on South Carolina TV ads saying McCain's pro-life." "Lindsey Graham's been duped," Gatling says. McCain spokesman Howard Opinksy, however, says that the quote was the result of a "confusing set of questions they [the reporters at the Chronicle] were asking at time about 'what if's and various hypotheticals. The smart answer probably would have been to avoid the hypotheticals. But McCain's always been in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. He was trying to make it clear, if unartfully, that he wanted to work simultaneously to overturn Roe vs. Wade while reducing the number of abortions in America."
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