Sun Jul 13, 1:05 AM Pacific • posted by Jed Lewison
John McCain's Birth Control Quagmire
McCain's highly uncomfortable refusal to discuss whether insurers who cover Viagra should also cover birth control pills has actually started to break through the media filter, but unfortunately it's becoming known as "the Viagra question," as Jonathan Martin calls it in a post yesterday. This isn't just the media's creation -- it's also been fed by some in the lefty blogosophere treating it as a tee-hee moment about McCain with a you-know-what.
But McCain's discomfort had nothing to do with Viagra. It had everything to do with birth control. He's smart enough to know that most independent women don't know that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. And while most independent women probably would be alarmed to learn that he also has a record of voting against birth control, he can't exactly walk away from that record because it's also true that many on the evangelical right believe the birth control pill should be banned.
Take, for example, Mike Huckabee: