McCain Flip-Flops On Women's Lives

McCain Flip-Flops On Women's Lives

From ABC News:

"ABC News' Teddy Davis and Rigel Anderson Report: John McCain's campaign signaled on Wednesday that the Arizona senator is backing away from his previously stated goal of changing the GOP’s platform on abortion. (...)

McCain’s plan to take a hands-off approach with the abortion platform stands in stark contrast with the position he took during his first presidential run.

Back in 2000, McCain clashed with then-Gov. George W. Bush over his unwillingness to change platform language that called for a human life amendment banning all abortions.

McCain implored Bush to join him in wanting to add exceptions for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother. (...)

But now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee, the McCain camp is making it clear that he has no plans to push for changes to the platform.

McCain's decision to leave the platform untouched follows a warning from a prominent social conservative.

"If he were to change the party platform," to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother's life, "I think that would be political suicide," Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, told ABC News in May. "I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble.""

I can see opposing the exemption for rape and incest. If I believed that abortion was murder, which I don't, I would not think that abortion became any less wrong because of the circumstances in which a fetus was conceived. But opposing the exemption for cases in which carrying a child to term risks the life of the mother is another story entirely.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican party: where the political incentives line up in such a way that letting women die rather than get an abortion is the smart way to go.