Palin: * Record * Teen Moms * Disability Rights

MIMI ABRAMOVITZ

Abramovitz is professor at Hunter College School of Social Work in New York, author of Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present and co-author of Taxes Are a Women's Issue: Reframing the Debate.

She said today: "I saw a Republican delegate on TV, a woman with a large button on her hat: 'I Support Unwed Mothers.' There's this extraordinary double standard at play. For years, poor and African American unwed mothers were scolded and penalized. This is what so-called welfare 'reform' was about -- punishing single motherhood. Now, some of the same political forces that championed that policy are talking about how Palin's unwed pregnant daughter humanizes her because they say it makes her just like families that have problems with their kids. Why then doesn't the plight of a poor African American woman humanize her?"

See the Washington Post piece "Palin Slashed Funding for Teen Moms."

BARBARA LUBIN

Last night, Palin said: "To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message for you: For years, you've sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. And I pledge to you that, if we're elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."

Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, Lubin said today: "I gave a child up for adoption when I was 17 and then I gave birth to and raised a child with Downs Syndrome. But those things don't qualify me to hold political office. Will Palin resist the current efforts to roll back the Americans with Disabilities Act? We need people who will undo so much of the damage the current administration has done, whether on civil rights or the Mideast."

JAMES WARD

Ward is president of the National Coalition for Disability Rights. He said today: "Will Palin now get John McCain to end his opposition to the Community Choice Act, which would end the institutional bias in America's healthcare financing system and allow people with disabilities to live in their own homes and communities rather than isolated nursing homes and other institutions?

"Will she, like John McCain, support judicial nominees to the Supreme Court and lower-level courts who have disregarded the intent of Congress and dramatically rolled back the civil rights protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act, leaving millions of Americans with epilepsy, diabetes, mental illness, HIV-AIDS, and other disabilities unprotected?"

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