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NRL News
A Closer
Look at Pro-Life Senator John McCain
“John
McCain boasts one of the most consistent pro-life voting records in
the Senate, but he doesn’t do much boasting about it.” Although it seems as if the 2008 presidential campaign has gone on so long it might have begun in the last century, we are still six months out from the general election. At yet, odd as it may seem, the American people are all the better for this. How can that be? For one thing, Mr. Smoothie, a.k.a. pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama, no longer is the beneficiary of absolute press adulation. Although still erect, he has stumbled, bumbled, and come close to falling on his face. We are learning that his considerable “quirks” are a designer flaw, not a bug in the system. If he goes on to defeat fellow pro-abortion celebrant Sen. Hillary Clinton—by no means a sure thing at this point—the press will return to its default position: ABR—Anyone But a Republican. The “mainstream press” will operate like an echo chamber for the Abortion Establishment, which is already getting its own finely tuned propaganda engine up and running. For another thing, that extended campaign season has also allowed for a fuller-orbed portrait of pro-life Senator John McCain to develop. Granted, there have been some areas where there has been disagreement with the Arizona senator. For example, while he opposes cloning and the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes, he has voted in favor of funding embryonic stem cell research. However, he has now said that he believes in adult stem cell research, and, in particular, skin stem cell research which may make embryonic stem cell research “academic.” And we have had our disagreements over what was labeled campaign finance “reform,” which a wide coalition of disparate groups, including NRLC, opposed on free speech grounds. But it is critical that we remember all the many areas of pro-life concern where Sen. McCain has been with us 100%. Our benighted opposition surely understands the differences between Obama and Clinton, on the one hand, and McCain, on the other hand. Just check out NARAL’s or Planned Parenthood’s web pages. For example, as the comparison piece on page 11 illustrates, McCain has voted to oppose Roe v. Wade, seeing it as the example par excellence of legislating from the bench. (More on this below.) McCain voted for and celebrated the eventual Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on partial-birth abortions. He voted for legislation that attempts to keep minors from being whisked across state lines from a jurisdiction that requires parental involvement to ones that don’t. And McCain further voted against opening up the federal spigot to organizations that perform or promote abortion. McCain has used interviews and public settings to reiterate his opposition to abortion. To cite just a few: • Talking about his pro-life voting record that goes back 25 years, McCain said in an interview last year with National Review, “I have many, many votes and it’s been consistent. And I’ve got a consistent zero from NARAL throughout all of those years. I may have had some other policy differences with some people in the pro-life community, but my record is clear. ... I’ve opposed [Roe v. Wade] ... because I thought it was a bad decision, and I think that the decision should be made in the states.” • At the last March for Life rally, pro-life Senator Sam Brownback read a statement from McCain: “If I am fortunate enough to be elected as the next President of the United States, I pledge to you to be a loyal and unswerving friend of the right to life movement.” • In mid-April McCain told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “the rights of the unborn is one of my most important values.” Pro-lifers understand that the Supreme Court typically functions like a brick wall against which legislation crashes and burns. Not always: the Court did uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2007. But the justices upheld this ban on a grotesquely violent abortion “technique” by a single vote. In his May 6 speech at Wake Forest University, McCain outlined in considerable detail the touchstones of his judicial philosophy which finds its antithesis in Roe v. Wade. Beyond celebrating Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito as models for the kind of nominees he would send up, I found two points most compelling. The first was McCain’s eloquence in warning of the danger judicial activism poses to the democratic process. The second was the contrast he drew between judicial activism, which is top-down, from genuine activism, which is bottom-up. Real activism in our country, he said, “is democratic. Real activists seek to make their case democratically—to win hearts, minds, and majorities to their cause. Such people throughout our history have often shown great idealism and done great good. By contrast, activist lawyers and activist judges follow a different method. They want to be spared the inconvenience of campaigns, elections, legislative votes, and all of that. “They don’t seek to win debates on the merits of their argument; they seek to shut down debates by order of the court. And even in courtrooms, they apply a double standard. Some federal judges operate by fiat, shrugging off generations of legal wisdom and precedent while expecting their own opinions to go unquestioned. Only their favorite precedents are to be considered ‘settled law,’ and everything else is fair game.” We will be writing more about Senator McCain, both in subsequent issues of National Right to Life News, and our daily blog, Today’s News & Views, found at www.nrlc.org. There is much to say. He is a fascinating man—a pro-lifer, an adoptive parent, and a man of almost limitless courage. If the anti-life forces do not underestimate him, surely we oughtn’t either. |