Ezra’s eyes were opened to how much Republicans are controlled by anti-choice fanatics. He lists a number of very conservative, more experienced potential Republican V.P. picks that McCain could have gone with, and then says:
And so instead we got Sarah Palin. Sometimes I don’t think it’s fully appreciated how constrained the GOP is by its pro-life orthodoxy.
It is confusing. And it’s more confusing the more you fall for the lie that the anti-choice movement is about “life”, because the discussion of “when life begins”, while fun for some people to debate about on blogs is largely irrelevant to most voters, who are rightfully concerned about their actual lives more than about theoretical lives. But I think it’s less confusing if you really, fundamentally believe that “abortion” is a stand-in issue for feminism itself, a way to turn feminism—-which was both a political movement and a social movement that’s somewhat out of the reach of policy-makers—-into a voting issue. Pro-choicers aren’t really single issue voters in the way that the anti-choice voting bloc is. And that’s true even when you’re talking the biggest feminists out there. We understand that feminism is a multi-faceted thing, and while it would be painful to do so, most of us would hold our nose and vote for an anti-choice Democrat over a nominally pro-choice Republican, especially if we can believe the former is more supportive of contraception access, equal pay, enforcing the VAWA, and of course the set of issues that most feminists care about that aren’t explicitly feminist, like creating and maintaining peace, and running a just, productive economy.