Following his vote last month to pass the Blunt amendment, which would have made women’s health insurance coverage subject to their insurers’ ideas of morality (a losing effort in the end), Scott Brown has been trying to make it up to our gender. He’s endorsing the policy that allows us to serve in combat roles in the military. He’s supporting the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act (also a losing effort so far). He’s praising our aptitude for the domestic arts — we cook, we clean, we sew!
There’s one subject he could raise that might help bridge this gender gap, but so far he seems unwilling to discuss it. When he was a state legislator, he was a strong supporter of legislation to establish buffer zones at women’s health clinics. Like the Blunt amendment, the buffer zone issue also involved the First Amendment rights of abortion and contraception opponents, pitting those rights against the rights of women to have access to health clinics without interference or intimidation. Brown not only voted to establish the buffer zones at clinics in the state. He felt so strongly about the issue that he joined 81 other Representatives, making a majority of the 160-member House, in signing a letter that persuaded (or forced) Speaker Tom Finneran, an abortion opponent, to bring the measure to the House floor for a vote. Seven years later, as a State Senator, Brown voted in favor of legislation to increase the size of the buffer zones from 18 to 35 feet.
An ideal issue to prompt a thoughtful discussion by Senator Brown that would demonstrate his independence and moderation on issues of women’s health? Apparently not, particularly when some members of today’s Massachusetts GOP want to repeal the buffer zone law altogether. Maybe someone in the press will inquire, but so far Brown’s silence suggests that his past position on this issue can only be a present-day headache.
Cross-posted here.
My thinking on this subject is simple. Brown needs Mass Citizens for Life in a way he never did when he was in the State House. Indeed, I am not sure MCFL have any influence on Beacon Hill (at least not now anyway). However, their satisfaction/dissatisfaction could affect enthusiasm among Massachusetts’ minimal one-issue pro-life voters, but more importantly cut off access to national fundraising. If GOP national fundraising groups that included pro-lifers smell RINOism on abortion, they’ll bail.
I would also argue that even Brown’s votes in the State House on the buffer zone could have been made for political expediency. While his senate district and remains Republican, it used to go Democratic, so rather than invite opposition from the women’s groups it was easier to just jump on a bandwagon and keep opponents at bay. It tests the imagination to think his thoughtlessness on women’s issues from Jeff Perry to the Blunt Amendment is only a recent development.
I would add that this explains his decision to dismiss critical gay rights issues as a “pet project.” Brown relies very heavily on a very small group of donors and national ones w/ very limited agendas and low tolerance for dissent. Certainly you could make the same argument about Elizabeth Warren in pushing for those rights, but her position also fits very nicely into her bread and butter stump about families, regardless of what they look like. Brown does not have such an explanation.
that RINOism on abortion could hurt the checkbook and that political expediency was (and is) at work. Paul Cellucci, who was the Gov. at the time, wanted this bill, and Brown has confessed to being a water-carrier for Republican governors, so that also goes into the expediency column. I was a little surprised that he went so far off the Mass. Citizens for Life path as to join in the letter to Speaker Finneran, but I guess the climate was significantly different 12 years ago.
… and I agree.