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.
Thanks ... It's a matter of principle.
"Doesn't look like he would choose pro-choice Justices to me."
This is nothing but hollow campaign statements that you keep touting as gospel. Here are his words too:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163223,00.html
"GIULIANI: That is not the critical factor. And what's important to me is to have a very intelligent, very honest, very good lawyer on the court. And he [Roberts] fits that category, in the same way Justice Ginsburg fit that category.
I mean, she was — she maybe came at it from a very different political background, very qualified lawyer, very smart person. "
The lesson of 2006 is Republicans lose when they don't carry the GOP Base.
The lesson of 2006 (and 1992) was that the GOP loses elections when they stop acting like Republicans.
Hunter, because he doesn't have to backpedal and lie to appeal to conservatives (and I don't mean people like you).
Not a clue, do you?
How much does John McCain have?
Mitt?
Guiliani?
Tancredo is looking for a million to run in Iowa.
"I'm sure 66 million years ago that the dinosaurs thought those puny mammals would never amount to anything."
That's the strangest analogy I've ever heard and how it relates to politics, I have no idea. Plus I'm sure dinosaurs didn't think rationally anyways.
"If he got the nomination, would you vote for him?"
I'll vote for whoever the GOP nominee is. I'll do anything to keep Hillary and Obama out of the White House. How about you?
Dear bornacatholic,
I understand your position.
It parallels my views about killing abortionists.
I'm against killing abortionists.
You're against killing abortionists.
Every decent and civilized person is against killing abortionists.
But who are WE to impose our moral values on folks who believe otherwise? People who want to kill abortionists may not share our moral values, our philosophical systems, our religious beliefs.
Certainly, we should all back measures to DISCOURAGE killing abortionists. Perhaps, we should make abortionist killers have to read an informed consent document explaining to them what happens to the abortionist as he's shot, gassed, or blown-up. Perhaps a 24-hour waiting period?
And for minors, of course! Parental notification (with judicial override, of course)!
We want abortionist killing to be rare. But safe and legal.
Right??
sitetest
And I love how you guys have no grasp of political realities.
So, are you two saying there's nobody good on national security who is also pro-life? Are you saying that one can be good on national security while being pro-amnesty?
You're mistaking the blackmail fringe for the base.
Common error.
The BASE always votes.
ROTFLOL! You say that with a straight face from solid BLUE New Jersey! LOL-LOL-LOL
I might be giving Rudy too much credit, but I wonder if he's not the source of some of this cynical crap. Remember, liberal Republicans will never be satisfied until they get a candidate in the White House who could get the Planned Parenthood endorsement as a Dem. Lots of them must see Giuliani as their best hope for that.
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