Everyone knows McCain is comfortable staying in Iraq for the next 100 years.  If you think that is the only area where he would have a lasting impact of equal duration, you are mistaken. Click on the image below to see what hangs in the balance:

Consider the legally protected (for now) reproductive rights of women.  Any women under the age of 40 can be forgiven for assuming "it was always like this" and will always be like this.  After all, many take it for granted that "choice" means deciding which type of birth control to use.  

The reality is quite different.  The reproductive rights women take for granted hang by a slender thread.  Unlike the legal rights of African Americans to citizenship or voting, the reproductive rights of women are not protected by any constitutional amendment or acts of congress specifically drafted for their benefit.  Reproductive rights are protected only by a handful of Supreme Court rulings.   Over the years there has been a constant campaign to undo these gains.  In recent years, these attacks have all been held back by narrow 5-4 decisions.  

Talk To Action contributor moiv has discovered a rather striking petition from 1996 in which Jim Wallis - along with a large number of prominent leaders of the Christian right - called for legal bans on abortion.

What does Jim Wallis think now ? It's impossible to tell. Writes moiv:

before his elevation as an "evangelical progressive" celebrity, together with a Who's Who of the Religious Right that he now says "gets it wrong" -- in lockstep agreement with Gary Bauer, Charles Colson, James Dobson, Robert George, William Kristol, Beverly LaHaye, Richard Land, Bernard Nathanson, Frank Pavone and Ralph Reed -- Jim Wallis signed a lengthy document that said plenty about abortion, culminating in a call for a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion entirely.  And to this day, adept as he is at dodging questions about his true position, Wallis has yet to repudiate a word of it.

One of the strangest and most disturbing of activities of the religious right in the U.S., is it's international alliance with the Vatican, the Mormon Church, and Islamic governments in the Middle East. While these entities might find themselves opposed on such matters as the war in Iraq, they form a united front in the fight against reproductive rights in the United Nations system.  

Pam Chamberlain of Political Research Associates has an excellent overview in the current issue of The Public Eye magazine. She describes how the alliance works, including the roles of such leading Christian Right groups as Concerned Women for America headed by Beverly LaHaye; the Family Research Council, headed by Tony Perkins, and the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (aka, CFam), headed by Austin Ruse who celebrated their activities at one UN meeting saying:

"We attended all of the women's meetings and essentially took them over. Memos were going back from the conference in New York to governments in the European Union that radical fundamentalists had taken over the meeting, and that was us."

From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom.

If you are committed to reproductive rights and social justice, this is THE place to be. On April 7-9, 2006, people will be gathering at Hampshire College [in Amherst, Massachusetts] to unite for reproductive justice. For this 20th annual reproductive rights conference, we are expecting hundreds of participants from the US and abroad and are offering more than 30 workshops and trainings. Conference speakers address reproductive freedom as it relates to a broad range of social justice initiatives including economic justice, healthcare reform, racial equality, peace, freedom from violence, youth liberation, civil liberties, and LGBTQ rights.

Over the weekend, you will learn about and share organizing experiences and strategies, broaden your understanding of reproductive rights, and make connections with other related movements and issues.

The conference is free and open to everyone. Whether you have been working on reproductive rights for decades or are new to the movement, you belong here! The conference is a forum for learning and networking for people of all ages and from a diversity of backgrounds.

The Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA hosts an annual student conference on reproductive rights. They have just posted the details of the 2006 conference.

One of the features of the conference is always a panel about the Right, and it's various elements. This year will be no exception. The organizers of the conference believe that it is necessary to have a clear grasp of the opposition in order to better defend and advance reproductive rights and other concerns.

I will be on this year's panel.