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.
Follow the money that goes into both groups to fight this and you will see why neither group wants to change. I think social issues belong in the States but neither pro-life or pro-abortion groups are going to support that effort. They bring in big bucks to keep fighting the issue.
Well I guess this quote from Rudy means nothing at all to you:
While in Ohio, Rudy called into the Bill Cunningham radio show. Speaking about the Supreme Court, Rudy said: "Justices Roberts and Alito were both colleagues of mine [in the Reagan Justice Department] - people I worked with and I admire tremendously. I thought that they were inspired choices that the President made - inspired in many ways, because they also were people who had a strong conservative background and strict constructionists." He added, "Justice Scalia was also a colleague of mine...and he probably would have been my choice for Chief Justice."
Doesn't look like he would choose pro-choice Justices to me.
Of course, the fact that many Boomers' kids became sexually active in the Reagan years would have nothing to do with that, it's all about Reagan screwing the (fill in name of Dem mascot constituency group here.)
I was just talking about this with my associate pastor during our regular Thursday morning breakfast. I know this will invite flames, but as for me, I am sick and tired of seeing the pubbies use cultural and moral issues as wedge issues and as a way of securing their "base" when the have no intention of fighting for substantial change. I will not vote for another candidate who is not strongly advocating, legislating, and working to restore a culture of life in this country. I guess for me that leaves me with my annual vote for Chris Smith for congress as he is the only person who fits that description in NJ.
AWESOME Post!
BINGO!!!
There is much more to being anti-abortion than judges. Using the bully pulpit - and BELIEVING IT - is vital. So is the willingness to sign anti-abortion legislation.
ROFLOL! Your arguments are so funny and so far out in left field that you bring humor to the day. The way you doom and gloomers play loose with the facts is astounding!
Duncan Hunter may end up SecDef under Rudy -- going to support him them?
But since the multiple issues are presented singly, critics are therefore single-issue and can be dismissed as such.
It's pretty bad when Rudy's boosters are reduced to such absurdity.
No, his record on fiscal and domestic issues speaks for itself. I actually pointed out some factual examples in my original post. And of course he'll be perfect on the WOT.
I can't argue with that but I HAVE YET TO SEE ONE PRESIDENT DO IT and I don't think we will at least not until the WOT is over with. The WOT takes top priority especially if we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 - I can guarantee it.
How can you tell Hilary would do this, but not Rudy?
They both say the same things about abortion, out of both sides of their mouths like 'good politicians trying' to say the right political thing.
Speaks more to a "thirst for power", than of a "desire to lead"
What in the hell are you talking about? Bush has consistently promoted a pro-life position and signed the partial-birth abortion ban.
Man, Murdock's article was absurd enough, but you're taking this to new heights of such.
We'll just have to agree to disagree, which is fine. At least we can have an amicable debate and disagreement.
As a Principled Conservative, I look at the whole picture not a tiny portion of the picture. To me, it means putting a defensible nation at the top of my list. The so-called "social issues" are what makes this country worth defending. Or not.
Do believe the word homophobe would fit in the discussion! Hope these folks never watch HGTV house hunters!
I can't point you to a poll (short on time today) but I can tell you from anecdotal evidence that a large number of people do believe that almost no one has an abortion just because the baby is inconvenient. I even ran into one person who was angry because a fellow pro-lifer had told her about kids being killed for having a harelip, dwarfism or Downs Syndrome, but as we spoke I realized she thought that most abortions had some "medical" tie-in and that these cases that enraged her were just the least justified medically.
"That is a bogus premise, try again."
That's your opinion but I wholeheartedly believe its true. But just don't tell me by premise is bogus, tell me who else you think can win in 2008 and why.
Puh-leeze. That is nonsense - just about every pro-life group works long and hard to get Roe v. Wade repealed - which would return the issue to the states.
In your zeal to promote Rudy, have you been reduced to impunging the motives of principled pro-life groups? I would think you would be above such.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.