I'm a volunteer for Obama in Florida.
So far, I've been able to persuade about handful of undecided voters to our side. It's a very satisfying and exhilarating experience; but it can also be very exhausting. "Turning" an undecided towards Obama usually takes me about 10-20 minutes of intense conversation.
But two of my undecideds turned relatively quickly. That was because they were pro-choice voters who didn't know that Sarah Palin was anti-choice.
After those experiences, I sent messages to NARAL and NOW, imploring them to inform the American people about Palin's opposition to reproductive freedom. I would ask other Kossacks to do the same: if you click on the embedded links above, then you'll be taken to NOW/NARAL's contact pages.
Follow me over the flip to see how a McCain/Palin Administration would also endanger Griswold. You might find it useful information when you're persuading undecided voters.
Griswold v Connecticut was the landmark 1965 Supreme Court ruling that gave women the right to use contraceptives.
The Religious Right's "legal scholars" in the "American Center for Law and Justice" consider this decision to be one of the roots of all modern judicial "evil". To them, Roe is just an inevitable outgrowth of the "radical" Griswold decision.
This viewpoint has been articulated on Pat Robert's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Here are excerpts from their report called "Radical Rulings: The History of Judicial Activism" (emphasis added).
The next Supreme Court ruling that you may never have heard of, but which ended up radically altering American life, is 1965's Griswold v. Connecticut.
[Special Counsel Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ] explained, "If you look at Griswold, what you can see is the first time the Court recognized the right to privacy, which ends up becoming, ultimately, the right to abortion."
... ... this fundamental issue coming out of the right to privacy of Griswold...started a very downward trend."
And later in 2003, when Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, it cited Lawrence v. Texas as justification.
Sekulow sees these rights...... going straight back to Griswold.
"If you see a decision out of the Supreme Court that says same-sex marriage is required -- if that were to happen, I think they will find it primarily...originally...in Griswold, and bring it forward," Sekulow observed.
[Mat Staver of theLiberty Council] says that Everson and Griswold have something unfortunate in common. "Both of those represent judicial activism at its height...," he said, "[and] represent judges looking at the Constitution and interpreting their own ideological perspectives into the Constitution." "
But an end to that kind of activism -- what many conservatives hope for and many liberals fear ---could begin on the high court if enough new conservatives become justices here in the next few years.
The McCain/Palin threat to Griswold is very real. The Religious Right's radical viewpoint is already being implemented by the Bush Administration: they've issued federal guidelines undermining a woman's right to use birth control pills. John McCain opposes requiring insurance companies to cover birth control. His selection of an anti-choice running mate clearly demonstrates that he will follow Bush's lead in restricting reproductive rights.
If John "Life Begins at Conception" McCain becomes the next President, then overturning Roe would just be a prelude before overturning Griswold as well.
Tell Everyone.