McCain's Book Club:
The Arizona Senator Finds Himself in a Pro-Abortion Book.

By Cleta Mitchell

This commentary appeared in a slightly different form on nationalreview.com, February 7, 2001. Reproduced with permission.

John McCain is hawking a book of pro-abortion propaganda to his colleagues. Surprised? Don't be. He's the hero of the story.

Richard North Patterson's novel Protect and Defend tells a familiar story: Meanspirited conservatives, Republicans, and Christian Right anti-abortion fanatics in Washington, D.C. vs. the pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-campaign-reform forces of light.

Senator Chad Palmer is twice a hero: once for enduring being kidnapped and held hostage by Islamic extremists, and now for supporting campaign-finance reform even though he's a Republican. Palmer used to be pro-life, until his teenage daughter was able to start turning her life around by getting a legal abortion. And now he has to vote on a controversial nominee to be chief justice of the Supreme Court. The previous one, a hateful old conservative, died of a stroke while giving the oath of office to the new Democratic president. The president names a feminist judge.

During her confirmation hearings, this judge writes a decision letting a 15-year-old girl abort her hydrocephalic fetus at seven and a half months--over the objections of her parents, who are tyrannical religious zealots. She is bitterly opposed by anti-abortionists with names like Mace and Harshman, as well as by a group called the "Christian Commitment." Eventually a sleazy Washington lobbyist exposes the abortion in Senator Palmer's family. His daughter, distraught, drinks a bottle of wine, gets behind the wheel on an icy night, and dies. So guess who casts the deciding vote in the Senate? And guess which way he votes?

Last month, real-life Senators John McCain and Barbara Boxer jointly sent a copy of this book to every member of the Senate. This evening, McCain and Boxer are hosting a reception and book- signing party for Patterson in the United States Capitol. (The cover letter says, "Since many Senators are role models for his characters, [we] know Ric would be very pleased to meet you personally.")

That a strong proponent of abortion such as Sen. Boxer would like this book is understandable. She's even in the acknowledgments ("My guides included Sen. Barbara Boxer who has fought so hard and so well to bring to light the experiences of women facing late-term abortion..."). But why would McCain, who has always presented himself as a pro-lifer, promote a book that portrays opponents of late-term abortions as fanatics?

Because a theme of this silly book coincides with McCain's delusions about money and politics - - and his perception that Christian conservatives, anti-abortion and anti-gun-control activists have somehow commandeered the Republican party with big money, corrupting the process and stealing from McCain any hope of becoming president. In Patterson's book, it is the pro- life bad guys who are throwing around all the money.

And that really is fiction. In the 2000 election cycle, pro- abortion organizations gave $2.25 million in contributions to federal candidates - - not to mention the massive expenditures by the same organizations in their issue campaigns last fall. Jane Fonda contributed $12.23 million contribution to a shell group calling itself "Pro-Choice Vote," which then transferred huge sums to Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and others, in addition to producing and airing its own ads in support of pro-choice candidates and against their opponents. The thesis of Patterson's book is thus wrong. That'll teach him to get all his research from Common Cause (he's on its board).

Obviously and justifiably, John McCain sees himself as the hero in this book. He no doubt identifies with Sen. Palmer's comment to his wife: "More and more, I tend to like the people who don't believe as I do more than the ones who do."

News flash for Sen. McCain: You don't believe as we do. You've done what most media-driven Washington figures do - - you've " grown" in office.

Cleta Mitchell, a Washington attorney in the firm of Sullivan & Mitchell, P.L.L.C., specializing in election and campaign- finance law.