Palin

[korilian]

American politics just got a little more interesting again.

Now there's Palin. Big strong woman in politics, that definitely managed to charm me a bit, but whom to my great horror is pro-life. Now I'll freely admit that I admire her for sticking with her beliefs when she had to face that choice herself, but the thing is: Will she now get to make that choice for other women too? How much power does a VP have anyway? How far do her views on this go or McCains for that matter?

A pro-life friend stated that a pro-choice VP would be just as upsetting for a lot of pro-life women as Palin is to me right now. But the thing is: Under no circumstance could a pro-choice politician make me give up my baby. That choice is mine. A pro-life politician on the other hand WANTS to take that choice away from me! Now honestly I don't know if I would have an abortion if I got pregnant at this point. Probably not. But that doesn't mean I'll give up my right to choose!

You could argue that this isn't my problem, since I'm not American, but here's to a little solidarity amongst women.

Discusion welcome as long as it's civil. Otherwise I'll be closing this one down.

Comments

[ismenetruth.livejournal.com]

Oh, Palin's charming, all right - as long as you don't look too hard at her qualifications or her positions. I can totally respect someone with her beliefs or someone who supports her because of that, but I'm seriously done with former Clinton supporters who are throwing themselves behind her because she's a woman. Politically, she's the anti-Hilary, and that's not okay.

Re: McCain's opinion on abortion - back in 2000, when he ran as a moderate Republican with a history of bipartisanship, he toned down the pro-life rhetoric, but he's always been pretty rabidly anti-choice, and it's only gotten worse this election cycle. I think he understood that the only way to get the nomination was to play to the base, and he did. Unfortunately, this makes him a pretty scary option for those of us on the moderate-to-liberal end of the political spectrum.

Some other stuff about Palin that's interesting: McCain/Palin on working mothers, Palin's lack of support for other people's pregnant daughters, and an explanation of why McCain and Palin are hypocrites on abortion.

I've got more links floating around somewhere, I'm sure, but those were the first ones I thought of. The Daily Show also has a couple of hilarious (and true) clips up at their website about coverage of the Palin nomination from their show on - I want to say either Wednesday or Thursday. The one where Stewart interviews Newt Gingrich, anyway, not to mention Samantha Bee's brilliant and funny coverage from the RNC floor about abortion from Friday.

And PS, any non-American who's interested in reducing global poverty or fighting HIV/AIDs or improving women's situations in the third world should care about McCain/Palin's stance on this. The Bush administration has used its pro-life, pro-abstinence-only-education stances as a justification to institute the global gag rule, which refuses to fund relief organizations that do comprehensive HIV/AIDs prevention efforts (ie, talk about condoms), that offer family planning services to poor women, or that work with people who do either of those things. McCain supports the gag rule, and while Palin's not on the record on the subject, I can't imagine that her opinion would be very different.