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Don’t get excited. John McCain didn’t respond directly to the questions about his positions on economic and reproductive justice we (Carole Joffe and I) first put to him on Labor Day and have been asking him ever since.
But
he's shocked even us since then with his over the top contempt for
women. During his third debate with Barack Obama, when Obama expressed
concern over the Supreme Court’s upholding a federal abortion ban
because it didn’t contain an exception for women’s health, McCain made “air quotes” around “health exception,” and alleged, “ You know that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement to mean almost anything.”
We
could tell lots of stories about women whose lives and reproductive
capacity have depended on their access to the banned abortion methods,
but we couldn’t top Samantha Bee’s send up of McCain’s insensitivity?
Turns
out McCain’s dismissal of the health issues facing real women in the
real world is of a piece with his record on many other issues facing
working women.
So now, as election day (finally!) looms tomorrow, and in the midst of an economic meltdown that disproportionately affects women, especially unmarried women,
it’s time to revisit the questions we asked John McCain on Labor Day
and later expanded to include his running mate Sarah Palin. Below is
the original post’s questions with updates and additional links to the
answers we found:
Now that the Republican National Convention balloons have fallen, let's get down to some concrete policy talk with John McCain.
The frenzied media circus surrounding McCain's choice for running mate, Sarah Palin, surfaced many questions, some of an unduly personal nature. But some of those personal matters, like her 17-year old daughter's pregnancy, raise legitimate questions about McCain's policy agenda.
We take seriously Barack Obama's
eloquent plea that candidates' families -- and especially their
children -- be allowed a zone of privacy. And we feel compassion for
the two teenagers whose personal lives are being publicly dissected
literally around the globe. But any candidate's positions on policy
matters -- some of which in this case bear directly on the issues
surrounding sex, pregnancy, childbearing and family well-being -- are
most certainly fair game for discussion in this election. They affect
every American, after all.
So while we agree that Bristol and Levi should be left in peace,
John McCain's choice of Palin only intensifies our concerns about his
responsiveness to serious issues facing most working women.
Yes, yes, we know that Sarah Palin is herself a working woman. A
working woman on steroids, some might argue -- given that she went back
to work three days after giving birth to her son, Trig. We're an
advocate and academic, respectively, with long-standing passions for
economic and reproductive justice for women. We've come to understand
the direct and profound interconnections between the two. There's good
reason why the words "barefoot and pregnant" have been so frequently
joined together historically.
It's positive news that Palin's candidacy has jettisoned these
policy matters squarely into the public eye. For we haven't heard
anyone question McCain from that intersection of women's lives during
the hours of airtime, barrels of ink and glut of blogposts that have
been given over to the Palin family's predicament. So we are asking him
these questions now, while the glare of voter interest shines light on
them:
First, John McCain, do you think women belong in the paid labor force?
This might seem facetious or rhetorical, but it's a very serious,
core question. We know your wife, Cindy, chairs the board of her
family's company. Until you asked Palin to be your running mate, which
tells us you think it's right for women to hold the highest political
offices, your most visible surrogate to female voters was Carly
Fiorina, until recently a top corporate CEO. [UPDATE: and now “until recently” a McCain surrogate, having too often spoken the truth.]
But surely you realize the overwhelming majority of women don't have
the resources of these women. Teen moms in particular are more likely
to live in poverty because of truncated educational opportunities. And
many of these young mothers do not have a supportive family, with
financial resources to help them, as Bristol Palin is fortunate enough
to have. So they're going to have to enter the workforce to feed their
children.
If you accept that most women will spend some of their lives in
the labor force, then, do you believe women should earn the same as
men, for the same jobs?
You and your running mate
have both opposed the equal pay measure stalled in Congress -- the
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. You say it's because it would "open us up
to lawsuits."
Open up whom? And if you