Did you know that a poll indicated that nearly 50% of McCain's current female supporters in battleground states are pro-choice?
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A Planned Parenthood poll of women voters in 16 battleground states earlier this year showed 49 percent of McCain's supporters called themselves pro-choice and said they support Roe.
NARAL says that is precisely why it endorsed Obama now. The group's leaders fear that many pro-choice women who support McCain don't know he is against abortion rights. (Indeed, the Planned Parenthood poll showed that half of women who supported McCain couldn't describe his position on the issue.) NARAL's board members, including Clinton supporters, voted unanimously to get behind the likely Democratic nominee so they could start going after McCain.
These numbers suggest that there is a HUGE pool of current McCain supporters (uninformed pro-choice females) in battleground states just ripe for being siphoned away from McCain, and suggest that McCain could be defeated on just the pro-choice issue ALONE, but the problem right now with that is that:
American women by-and-large have grown complacent and lax about their right to choose a safe & legal abortion; American women assume that their right to choose has somehow been cast in concrete and cannot ever be taken away from them, so they take such for granted and assume that such is therefore a non-issue for them.
American women need a serious wake-up call.
Check out this May 14, 2008 Quinnipiac poll question:
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- Which of the following will be the single most important issue in your vote in the election for President this year? (Read options)
(what women voters chose)
The economy - 46%
War in Iraq - 22%
Health care - 14%
Illegal immigration - 6%
Terrorism - 5%
Something else - 4%
DK/NA - 2%
Now, I see two big problems with the way that the above Quinnipiac poll question was structured. First of all, voters were forced to choose just 1 issue from the offered issues list, and a woman's right to choose appears to not have even been offered as an issue option, probably because this very same question and very same options list was offered to both men and women.
In any event, it is obvious that right now Quinnipiac thinks that a woman's right to choose will not even be on the radar screen this November,
and that must change.
This campaign season, American women must be educated to the fact that:
1.) American women are now just one Supreme Court judge away from becoming second-class citizens and losing control over their own bodies;
2.) McCain is fiercely anti-choice, and will likely get to appoint that 1 Supreme Court judge if McCain becomes president.
I can think of no better way to shut down McCain's plan to siphon angry female Hillary supporters away from Obama than to educate every woman in America as to how dangerously close they are to becoming second-class citizens again regarding the issue of choice.
I doubt that the Obama campaign itself will directly take up/work the abortion rights issue, so the responsibility for educating all American women as to how close they now are to losing control over their own bodies will fall upon the pro-choice 527 groups (Emily's List, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, NOW) as well as pro-choice female MSM pundits & pro-choice female MSM show guests.
MoveOn.org should also seriously consider taking up choice as a cause via a major pro-choice anti-McCain ad campaign, because such an ad campaign would accomplish these 4 things simultaneously:
1.) Keep the angry female Hillary supporters on the Dem farm;
2.) Shut down cold McCain's plan to go after the angry female Hillary supporters;
3.) Give pro-choice women yet another compelling reason to vote Dem;
4.) Seriously reduce McCain's current level of uninformed pro-choice female support by informing them of McCain's anti-choice stance.
I am of course not suggesting here that a women's right to choose should trump the blockbuster issues of the economy (gas prices) or Iraq or Health care; I AM suggesting here that the Obama campaign will itself directly & amply deal with those particular issues, while others must step up and make a women's right to choose an important election issue as well, for the 4 reasons I just cited above.