But Don’t Worry: John McCain’s Daughter Will Have Abortion On Demand!

USA Today has a handy-dandy chart showing what a post-Roe landscape would look like. As you can see, despite disingenuous claims that overturning Roe is no big deal, roughly 200 million people live in states where the rights of non-affluent women either will or are at significant risk of having their reproductive rights stripped. (And, again, in many cases this will be triggered automatically.) Just so we’re clear about how many women the Richard Cohens of the world are happy to throw under the bus.

Speaking of which, I’m afraid that Jon Chait–who I honestly thought would have figured things out by this late date–still has his unrequited crush, sitting at home with his “Straight Talk Express” mixtape and telling himself that “despite his public statements, voting record, and the nature of the party he’s seeking to lead, I’m sure that John McCain is secretly a liberal!” Get a load of this:

McCain also showed signs of abandoning his social conservative views. He came out in favor of government-financed stem cell research. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he declared “certainly in the short term or even in the long term, I would not support the repeal of Roe v. Wade.” He said that if his daughter wanted an abortion, he would leave the decision up to her. (He did retreat from both these comments after conservatives recoiled in horror, but his real thinking on the subject seemed perfectly clear.)

Of course John McCain wouldn’t actually want the state to coerce his daughter not to have an abortion. That just makes him a typical American “rights for me but not for thee” social conservative. And the nice thing for him is that there’s no contradiction in his positions. Overturning Roe, as a justice appointed by a President McCain would probably vote to do, certainly wouldn’t prevent John McCain’s daughter from getting an abortion–she’ll have the money to fly to California in the unlikely event that her old man’s connections can’t get her a grey market abortion within her current metro area. Abortion laws are about restricting the rights of some other nameless sluts whose judgment can’t be trusted, not a woman of good solid Republican stock. I’m just amazed that Chait is taking this standard-issue Republican double standard as evidence that McCain is “with us at heart.” Really, give it up.