A Pro-Choice Democratic Nominee

No doubt by now, nearly everyone has heard that Sen. Barack Obama has surpassed the number of delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination for President. Last night the final two races (North Dakota and Montana) showed how close this race between Sen. Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton has been. Each of them won a state last night, but Sen. Obama's previous lead in delegates, and a wave of super-delegate support yesterday, pushed him over the top.

This has been a very long and unprecedented primary in many ways, but what I think is so cool about it is that from the beginning of this process in January all the way through last night, all of the candidates who even had a chance of winning on the Democratic side were 100% pro-choice and pro-women's health care! I don't think the pro-choice community could be any happier with either Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama- they have both been champions of our issues for a long time.

A quick story: Last summer at the annual conference for Planned Parenthood staff who work on policy and organizing, both Senators Clinton and Obama came to speak, as did Elizabeth Edwards on behalf of her husband, John Edwards, who had another engagement to attend at that time. Each spoke for nearly an hour about their commitment to Reproductive Justice and what they would do as President to ensure that women retained the right to affordable reproductive health care, family planning services, accurate information, and abortion, not to mention how they would handle the inevitable Supreme Court nominations they would have to make. The room of 700 Planned Parenthood staff was ecstatic- after 8 years of an extreme anti-choice administration any of the three would have been a welcome change... and not just becuase they were better than President Bush on our issues, but becuase they are all excellent on our issues!

One person who is NOT excellent on our issues is the Republican nominee, John McCain. In fact, he's horrible on just about everything we care about here at Planned Parenthood. We are a non-partisan organization, but it's not hard to figure out who we'll be supporting in November, when one nominee has introduced bills on our behalf and truly cares about the well-being of women, men, and teens in America, and one has made it clear that Roe v. Wade should be over-turned and Supreme Court Justices should be like current Justice and anti-choice extremist Samuel Alito.

I am excited that a Senator with a 100% pro-choice rating has a true shot at becoming the next President of the United States!