Kathryn, your correspondent makes some telling criticisms of Senator McCain, but I think his take on McCain’s 1999 comments on Roe is mistaken.

It seems to me that when McCain said that the country was not ready to overturn Roe, he clearly meant only that the country was not ready to see abortion outlawed. That is both a true statement and something President Bush has said many times without pro-lifers’ complaining about it. He clarified his remarks pretty quickly. McCain has consistently voted against abortion as a legislator, and last year he told me, on the record, that he thinks that the Supreme Court should overturn Roe—which is more than Bush has said.