Republican Lawmaker Now Supports Obama, Says GOP Presidential Candidates ‘Would Take Women Back Decades’

Questions about women and womens’ health have dominated the political debate over the past weeks, and at least one female Republican lawmaker is unhappy with her party’s record. New York Assemblyman Teresa Sayward (R), who is retiring after serving a decade in Albany, told the New York political program Capital Tonight that she does not support any of her party’s presidential candidates, because of their stances on women.

She also took an apparent shot at Republicans’ opposition to President Obama’s birth control mandate, saying, “It’s disheartening for me to see our party move away from what it was always about and that is to stay out of people’s lives, let them live their lives, don’t impose their religion on anybody else.”

Asked which Republican candidate she supports, Sayward replied:

SAYWARD: I do not have a favorite in the presidential race, if I had to vote today, I’d vote for Obama.

INTERVIEW: Really?

SAYWARD: Absolutely… Because I really, truly think that the candidates that are out there today for the Republican side would take women back decades.

Watch it:

Sayward said she was retiring for personal reasons, as well as because of her belief in term limits.

Sayward said she got her start in politics when she attended a local farmers’ meeting and was told women were to gather in the kitchen while men discussed business. “I didn’t come here to sit in the kitchen,” Sayward remembers saying, recounting how she soon integrated the meetings.