Obama Campaign Using Radio Ads, Mailings To Highlight McCain's Opposition To Abortion Rights

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 19 Sep 2008 - 6:00 PST

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Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) is using low-profile radio advertisements and campaign mailings in an attempt to dispel a perception that Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) is a moderate on abortion issues, the AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Obama supports abortion rights, while McCain opposes abortion rights except in cases of rape, incest or when pregnant women's lives are in jeopardy.

According to the AP/Star Tribune, the ads say that McCain takes an "extreme position on choice" and "will make abortion illegal." The Obama campaign also is running a radio ad in Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and other states in which nurse practitioner Valerie Baron says, "John McCain's out of touch with women today. McCain wants to take away our right to choose."

Democratic analyst Jenny Backus said the selections of conservative Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito have allowed Obama to use concerns about the future of the court and make the issue a "big difference between him and McCain." Rich Galen, a Republican operative, said Obama's strategy to portray McCain as a "passionate" abortion-rights opponent "doesn't make any sense" because Galen believes most people are not-single issue voters on abortion.

McCain's response to the Obama campaign's strategy is to highlight his support for human embryonic stem cell research. McCain's campaign is running radio ads that promise to support stem cell research because it has the potential to "unlock the mystery of cancer, diabetes, heart disease." Both McCain and Obama have favored relaxing federal restrictions on federal embryonic stem cell research funding (Sidoti, AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, 9/18).

Independent Groups Release Abortion-Related Ads in Battleground States

In related news, several independent groups from both sides of the abortion-rights debate recently have released advertisements advocating their positions and targeting undecided women and Roman Catholic voters, the Wall Street Journal reports. The ads are being run primarily in battleground states with heavy large segments of Catholics, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

According to the Journal, some abortion-rights groups have been motivated to release the ads in part because of the nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Palin opposes abortion rights in all cases except to save pregnant women's lives.

The National Institute of Reproductive Health's Winning Message Action Fund launched an Internet campaign in August targeting Republican and independent women ages 30 to 60. The initiative, called "How Much Time?," feature ads depicting women as criminals with bars closing in on them and features messages such as, "When it comes to your personal freedoms, John McCain is worse than George W. Bush. Who's worse than John McCain? Sarah Palin."

Tucker Bounds, a McCain-Palin spokesperson, said implication that McCain and Palin "want to put women behind bars is absurd." According to the Journal, Catholics United on Friday will unveil an ad campaign targeted at Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan voters that combines abortion rights with the war in Iraq and more accessible health care. The ads say, "John McCain, it's not enough to say you are pro-life. You voted for a war that has killed thousands of Americans."

The Obama campaign also has rejected the foundation of a recently released ad from BornAliveTruth.org, which criticizes Obama's opposition to an Illinois law that would have required physicians to provide medical care to fetuses that were considered able to survive. The campaign said that Obama did not support the measure at the time because a similar law already existed in the state, adding that he would have supported the 2002 Born-Alive Infants Protection Act had he been a U.S. senator at the time (Chozick, Wall Street Journal, 9/18). Obama also has said he and other opponents of the Illinois bill thought it would have undermined the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade and would have had consequences for state laws governing abortion (Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 9/16).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

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