McCain's Pro-Life Record And Why Americans Assume He's Moderate

John McCain was mad. Fuming mad. It was then the early days of his political career, and he had paid an unscheduled visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Mesa, which was within his Arizona congressional district. That's when Gloria Feldt, then the CEO of the group's local chapter, got a phone call. "Congressman McCain is here," a staffer told her, "and he is screaming and it is upsetting the patients."

Feldt says McCain had always refused her offers to visit a clinic, but had apparently decided to make a spot visit of his own. What had raised his ire was a shelf containing information about Title X federal funding, which some clinics receive to support non-abortion-related reproductive health care for low-income women. McCain was upset that the clinic provided paper for people to write their representatives in support of the legislation, which requires constant advocacy because Congress must reauthorize it every year. "His immediate and incorrect assumption," says Feldt, "was that we were using federal funds to pay for lobbying." Feldt got on the phone. "He was screaming, 'I am going to defund her, I am going to get the federal government to defund you.'... [H]e rants and he raves and finally he hangs up on me."

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