Cecile Richards: What Would Ann Richards Do?

[babylonsister]

What Would Ann Do?

Posted June 10, 2008 | 01:00 PM (EST)


It's our time to put a president in the White House who cares about women's health, take back our country, and move once again with progress and commitment to the future. That's what Hillary Clinton said when she suspended her presidential campaign and that's what my mother Ann Richards would say if she were alive today. When Mom lost her reelection bid for governor of Texas to George Bush in 1994, she didn't just get over it, she went on with it -- on to campaign with gusto for hundreds of women and other progressive candidates across the country.

Mom required only one thing of the many folks who asked for her campaign help: a 100 percent belief in women's rights. If they didn't have it, they were out of luck. But if they stood up for women as she did, she would travel to the ends of the earth for them.

That's why if she were still around she would suit up and campaign for Senator Obama in the farthest corner of the farthest state. Mom would see in him a leader with a long and consistent record for standing up for women's health care, a man raised by a single mother, a father of two daughters, and a husband who supports women's rights 100 percent.

She'd see in him what we at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund see: a leader who will improve access to quality health care for women, a partner who will support and protect a woman's right to choose, and a president who will invest in prevention programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce the need for abortion.

Elections are about choices, and Mom would have said that women voting for John McCain would be like chickens choosing to vote for the Colonel. In 25 years in Washington, John McCain has consistently voted against women's health. McCain wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, opposes basic family planning programs, and voted against insurance coverage for birth control. He has a zero percent voting record from Planned Parenthood.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cecile-richards/what-would-ann-do_b_106291.html