Decision to Have Baby Isn’t Political, Mary Cheney Says

Decision to Have Baby Isn’t Political, Mary Cheney Says

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: February 1, 2007
Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, for the first time yesterday publicly defended her decision to become pregnant and asserted that same-sex couples were equally capable of raising children as heterosexual couples.

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Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Mary Cheney, at a Glamour magazine panel at Barnard College Wednesday, said of her baby: “It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate, on either side of a political issue. It is my child.”
“When Heather and I decided to have a baby, it was not going to be the most popular decision ever,” Ms. Cheney said, referring to her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.

She then gestured to her middle — any bulge disguised by a boxy jacket — and asserted: “This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child.”

Ms. Cheney, 37, was speaking at Barnard College in Manhattan in a panel discussion sponsored by Glamour magazine. The baby, whose sex she has not revealed publicly, is due this spring and will be the sixth grandchild for the vice president and his wife.

Ms. Cheney, who is vice president for consumer advocacy at AOL and lives in Virginia, has not said how she became pregnant.

Her father became testy last week during a CNN interview when the host, Wolf Blitzer, asked what he thought of conservatives, specifically James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, who are critical of his daughter’s pregnancy. In refusing to answer, Mr. Cheney told his interviewer that he was “over the line.”

Ms. Cheney said in a brief interview after the panel discussion that she was not speaking for her father but that when she saw the CNN interview, she also felt Mr. Blitzer had crossed a line. “He was trying to get a rise out of my father,” she said.

The discussion took place in a parlor decorated with blowsy flower wallpaper and regal portraits of former Barnard presidents. Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour, asked Ms. Cheney if she had anything to say to critics like Mr. Dobson.

He wrote in Time magazine in December that years of social research “indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father.” He also wrote that his group believes that “birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples.” Two of the researchers Mr. Dobson cited have complained that he distorted their views and said they disagreed with his conclusions.

Ms. Cheney agreed the research was distorted. “Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years on this issue has shown there is no difference between children who are raised by same-sex parents and children who are raised by opposite-sex parents,” she said. “What matters is that children are being raised in a stable, loving environment.”

The audience, of about 100 people, most of them Barnard students, applauded her warmly. So did her fellow panelists, including Gloria Feldt, the former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Kathleen Turner, the actress.

The panel was titled “Success at 20, 30, 40,” and was held to provide material for the September issue of Glamour.

Ms. Cheney expressed some impatience with women who complain about the difficulties of “having it all,” noting that one of her forebears gave birth “in the back of a wagon and had no support system,” living in a tent on the oil fields outside of Casper, Wyo.

“I look at myself, I have a successful career, an incredible partner, we’re about to have a child, and we are incredibly fortunate in that we have the financial means to be able to do that,” she said. “But this notion that women today are overwhelmed with choices, my God, my grandmother would have killed to have these choices.”

Later, Ms. Cheney was asked whether she would support a woman for president. Ms. Cheney, asserting that she was not referring to anyone in particular — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name was never uttered — said she would vote for the most qualified person and that voting for someone based on their sex was “absolutely foolish.”

Ms. Cheney is the author of “Now It’s My Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life,” published last year after she worked in her father’s re-election campaign. In the book, she wrote that she came “pretty close” to quitting when President Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Ms. Leive asked her if she ever thought of calling up President Bush and telling him how she felt. Ms. Cheney said Mr. Bush “let it be known to me that if I wanted to put out a statement, talking about my position publicly, he would fully support it, he would recognize my right to dissent.” She said she did not do so because she was not the candidate.

She also said she continued working for the campaign because the idea of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, becoming president was “terrifying,” acknowledging that her view would probably not be a popular sentiment among the Barnard students.

Even if there were political differences with Ms. Cheney, several of them said after the panel that they found her sympathetic. Leslie Lipton, 20, said she thought Ms. Cheney should be able to have a baby if she wanted one and was raising the child in a loving home.

“I think people will take it as a political statement because she is so much in the public eye,” Ms. Lipton said. “But in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be political.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/washington/01cheney.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1170381305-0eSI/zBak0k21otc/Ub2YQ&oref=slogin extracted February 2, 2007