NARAL Pro-Choice America wants Nutmeg Staters to vote for Lieberman, and for Republicans Simmons and Johnson. (They haven't made up their minds about Shays, who blotted his pro-choice copybook in 2003 by voting to ban so-called partial birth abortion.) Just north, in Rhode Island, they're supporting Lincoln Chafee for the Senate against Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse. All these contests are close. NARAL's money, volunteers and stamp of approval could make a difference -- perhaps even the difference.
With all due respect to NARAL, an organization I've supported faithfully for years, are they out of their minds? "We're not a partisan organization," NARAL President Nancy Keenan told me when we spoke by phone. "Party politics are not where we get involved."
But for the pro-choice agenda to have a shot, Congress must change hands. It's that simple. The dwindling number of pro-choice Republicans are the party's useful idiots, permitted to cast futile votes against the "partial birth" abortion ban or right-wing Supreme Court nominees such as Samuel Alito and John Roberts, or in favor of federal funding for birth control and sex ed (while casting hundreds of other votes along party lines) because their function is to hold on to seats that a more reactionary candidate -- an anti-choice hard-liner, say -- couldn't win.
In case you weren't aware, Lieberman was the guy that voted against NARAL in trying to require all publicly funded hospitals to provide Plan B contraception to rape victims — Joe famously said that after being raped they were free to take a "short ride" to another hospital if they wanted to. I hope after Tuesday that guy takes a "short ride" out of Washington.
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