Posted by Jed Lewison on Wed Jul 16, 2008 at 7:36 PM Pacific

McCain abstains from birth control discussion

The McCain camp had an interesting response to Planned Parenthood's new ad on requiring insurers who cover Viagra to also cover birth control:

These types of misleading partisan attacks won’t help women who are desperately in need of quality health care. John McCain’s plan will provide all Americans with choice and competition in health insurance, putting patients in charge of their own care instead of Washington bureaucrats.

Notice the statement didn't mention birth control at all? It's not an accident -- birth control really is a tough topic for McCain.

I've told you about Mike Huckabee wanting to ban the pill, and now it also turns out the Bush's HHS department is considering expanding the definition of abortion to include several forms of contraception.

This would of course be terribly unpopular policy, but John McCain's problem is that despite his history of carousing, he is a staunch ally of the anti-choice movement and has opposed efforts to make contraception more widely available to women. Here are some of his more extreme statements (via Steve Benen).