So was this train about 15 seconds before disaster struck. Let's avoid the possibility!
Posted on 01/18/2007 9:27:26 AM PST by Dark Skies
As pro-lifers prepare to mark Monday’s 34th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision, many wonder whether they could support former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for president despite his pro-choice views. While some of Giuliani’s statements on abortion make pro-lifers fret, they should find his record surprisingly reassuring.
“I don’t like abortion,” Giuliani said in South Carolina’s The State newspaper last November 21. “I don’t think abortion is a good thing. I think we ought to find some alternative to abortion, and that there ought to be as few as possible.”
Nevertheless, Giuliani’s pro-life critics point to his April 5, 2001 address to the National Abortion Rights Action League’s “Champions of Choice” luncheon in Manhattan.
“As a Republican who supports a woman’s right to choose, it is particularly an honor to be here,” Giuliani said. He added: “The government shouldn’t dictate that choice by making it a crime or making it illegal.”
“I have a daughter now,” Giuliani told TV’s Phil Donahue during his unsuccessful 1989 mayoral campaign. Giuliani continued: “I would give my personal advice, my religious and moral views…I would help her with taking care of the baby. But if the ultimate choice of the woman -- my daughter or any other woman -- would be that in this particular circumstance, to have an abortion, I’d support that. I’d give my daughter the money for it.”
But did Giuliani’s mayoral deeds match such words?
According to the state Office of Vital Statistics, total abortions performed in New York City between 1993 (just before Giuliani arrived) and 2001 (as he departed) fell from 103,997 to 86,466 -- a 16.86 percent decrease. This upended a 10.32 percent increase compared to eight years before Giuliani, when 1985 witnessed 94,270 abortions.
What about Medicaid-financed abortions? Under Giuliani, such taxpayer-funded feticides dropped 22.85 percent, from 45,006 in 1993 to 34,722 in 2001.
The abortion ratio also slid from 890 terminations per 1,000 live births in 1993 to 767 in 2001, a 13.82 percent tail-off. This far outpaced the 2.84 percent reduction from 1985’s ratio of 916 to 1993’s 890. While abortions remained far more common in Gotham than across America (2001’s U.S. abortion ratio was 246), they diminished during Giuliani’s tenure, as they did nationally.
Giuliani essentially verbalized his pro-choice beliefs while avoiding policies that would have impeded abortion’s generally downward trajectory.
New York pro-lifers concede that Giuliani never attempted anything like what current Mayor Michael Bloomberg promulgated in July 2002. Eight city-run hospitals added abortion instruction to the training expected of their OB-GYN medical residents. Only those with moral objections may refuse this requirement.
Giuliani could have issued such rules, but never did.
Interestingly enough, after Giuliani left, Medicaid abortions under Bloomberg increased 5.19 percent from 34,722 in 2001 to 36,523 in 2003.
Asked if he could cite any Giuliani initiative that advanced abortion, New York State Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long told me, “I don’t remember, and I don’t think so.” He added: “I never remember seeing him promote the issue, to my knowledge.”
“I like him a lot -- although he doesn’t share my particular point of view on social issues,” televangelist Pat Robertson said May 1, 2005 on ABC’s “This Week.” “He did a super job running the city of New York and I think he’d make a good president.”
If Giuliani can sway Pat Robertson, can he attract other pro-lifers? Short of dizzying himself and others with a 180-degree reversal from a pro-choice to a pro-life posture, Giuliani should embrace parental-notification rules, so minors who seek abortions need their folks’ permission, as they now do for ear piercing. He should oppose partial-birth abortion, which even Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and liberal stalwart Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont have voted to prohibit.
Similarly, Giuliani should propose that Uncle Sam exit embryonic-stem-cell research laboratories and instead let drug companies -- not government -- finance such embryocidal experiments, if they must. He also could pledge to nominate constitutionalist judges skeptical of penumbras emanating outside Planned Parenthood clinics.
And, of course, Rudolph W. Giuliani should remind Republican primary voters that on his watch, total abortions, taxpayer-funded Medicaid abortions, and the abortion ratio all went the right way: down.
Mr. Murdock, a New York-based commentator to HUMAN EVENTS, is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Rino Rudy is a liberal and will not get my vote.
1) As far as abortion goes, praising Pres. Bush's picks for SCOTUS is simply good partisan politics. It doesn't mean he'll choose likewise, and I have no reason to believe he will.
2) You completely ignore the Second Amendment. 3) All Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, are "good" on the foreign policy issues. Giuliani is in no way distinguished, here.
4) Rudy and McCain are, IMO, the only two Republicans that can win in 2008. Thank you for noting that is your opinion. Many Giuliani supporters state it as fact. In any case, it is not my opinion at all.
So: No, thank you. I'll not be supporting your candidate.
ProLife Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my ProLife Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
As a percentage, the national numbers dropped much more than the NY numbers.
Window dressing.
Giuliani has to do a few things to earn my support:
1. He must renounce his pro-choice position and adopt the minimum of Rilom Pro-life (rape, incest, life of mother)
2. He must renounce partial birth abortion and any 3rd trimester abortion.
3. He must renounce gun control of any variety.
Then I'll give him my vote.
I'll not waver.
The Rudyistas would be going crazy.
But it was okay for their man Rudy to live with a couple of queers!
Us Rudyistas as you call us could not care less if Obama had to temporarily live with two friends who offered him their apartment because his wife kicked him out of the "mayor's" mansion (if I were him I wouldn't want to live with that BEEEYatch either) like she owned the place and it was the city's house not hers. Since when did Having gay friends who are kind enough to offer you their apartment become a sin or is it you guys can't stand gays so much that you would hate Rudy or anyone because of that.
Good for you!
That's an example of people playing with statistics. Studies show that the vast majority of Americans are in favor of some restrictions on the procedure. So, the bulk of the electorate is to the right of NARAL...and Rudy.
So was this train about 15 seconds before disaster struck. Let's avoid the possibility!
What would he have to do, to convince you that his conversion was honest?
Rudy haters? People who think running a lib in the general is a bad idea are now haters? That's a new one on me, I don't hate him. I just don't think we're going to win by running Dem Lite.
The writer is attributing successes in reducing abortions to Guiliani that are not Guiliani's.
That is a bogus premise, try again.
*I don't think counterfeiting money is a good thing. I think we ought to find some alternative to counterfeiting money, and that there ought to be as little counterfeited money in circulation as possible.
"Vote for me, I am a fiscal conservative" Rudy announced today at a rally
“I like him a lot -- although he doesn’t share my particular point of view on sound money,” televangelist Pat Robertson said.
Got proof of this claim?
Three things would satisfy:
1. Pledge to appoint only strict constructionist judges.
2. TV speech in which he says he's changed his mind.
3. Advocacy of their continuation as Repub Party Platform planks.
Why not just go with Duncan Hunter. He's already there!
So in your mind Rudy is responsible for every freaking abortion that happened in this freaking city during his term as mayor??? The law was the law and still is! It was the law when Reagan was in office and the law when Clinton was in office and Bush - did it change??? NOOOO!! - you can't stop women from having abortions until the law is overturned! WHAT THE HECK DID YOU WANT RUDY TO DO - STAND OUTSIDE THE ABORTION CLINICS and STOP THEM??? He had better things to do as mayor. You really think a president will be able to overturn abortion? You really are living in a dream world! It's not going to happen with this president not with the WOT happening!
“'I don’t think abortion is a good thing. I think we ought to find some alternative to abortion, and that there ought to be as few as possible.'
"*I don't think counterfeiting money is a good thing. I think we ought to find some alternative to counterfeiting money, and that there ought to be as little counterfeited money in circulation as possible."
I don't believe that exterminating abortionists is a good thing. I think we ought to find some alternative to exterminating abortionists, and that there should be as few exterminations as possible.
- But hey - I don't want to impose MY morality on anyone else.
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