McCain the Anti-Choicer

STEPHANOPOULOS: You're for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, with some exceptions for life and rape and incest.

MCCAIN: Rape, incest and the life of the mother. Yes.

Crooks and Liars has the video and the transcript.

I’d just like to point out how fundamentally shitastic this position is. If someone asserts that abortion is morally wrong because it is murder, there’s no logistical gymnastics they can do to justify exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. At least no justification that would make a woman unwillingly pregnant by a rapist or family member free to “murder” the fetus, but not free to murder that child any time during its life. If you believe that killing a fetus is murder, but it’s okay in cases of rape, then surely a woman who changes her mind five years in should have the right to murder her child if it’s the product of rape. And surely, it makes just as much sense to let her murder the guilty person who caused the pregnancy, if it’s okay to let her murder the innocent “baby.”

Of course, no one’s arguing that women should have a right to kill their rapists, nor 5-year-old children who were born as the result of a rape, so how, if someone genuinely believes that abortion is murder, can they reasonably argue that abortion exceptions for rape or incest are okay? They can’t—not without acknowledging that a fetus is not the same thing as a living human being.

The truth is, all they’re arguing is that if a woman doesn’t want sex, but it’s forced on her, then any unwanted resulting pregnancy can be disposed of, but if she does want sex, then any unwanted resulting pregnancy, even if she took precautions against it, is her burden to bear. Women who have the temerity to be sexual creatures are to be punished for their sins.

And let’s consider for a moment what this says to men. If you’re a man who has consensual sex with a woman, and, as partners, you take every precaution against conception, yet a pregnancy nonetheless results, and abortion is no longer an option, you’re fucked. But if you rape a woman, and impregnate her, she can terminate the pregnancy. Is anyone happy with the message that rape affords men a likelihood of avoiding unplanned fatherhood that consensual sex does not? Men who have the temerity to be loving creatures are punished for their sins.

Talk about playing into the ugliest sex stereotypes imaginable.

Anyway, McCain only feels comfortable supporting that ridiculous constitutional amendment because he knows it has no chance of passing. What he really likes is the idea of federalizing abortion—overturning Roe and sending abortion back to the States:

MCCAIN: I don’t think a constitutional amendment is probably going to take place, but I do believe that it’s very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should — could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you’d be for that?

MCCAIN: Yes, because I’m a federalist. Just as I believe that the issue of gay marriage should be decided by the states, so do I believe that we would be better off by having Roe v. Wade return to the states. And I don’t believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade.

And for a thorough fisking of that particular bit of nonsense, head on over to LeMew, who reminds us that “Social conservatism for thee-but-not-for-me is pretty much what social conservatism means in this country.” Indeed.