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.
"No, the base doesn't make up 51% of the voting population. We have to be able to carry the independent swing voters. That was the lesson of 2006. I'm surprised at all fast that lesson has been forgotten."
No, but they are the ones who donate money, put signs in their yards, man the phones, campaign for a candidate and drive people to the polls. How many of your independent swing voters are gonna do that??
The lesson of 2006 was act like Republicans or lose your support.
I will be back to discuss this further but I have to go to grocery to stock up as 8-10 inches of snow are expected into our area starting tomorrow. Already bought propane this morning but now need to stock up on some others things and make sure that the wood is brought onto the front porch for the fireplace. Mundane things to do with a major storm coming in for the 2nd weekend in a row.
My deck still has 2 inches of ice and more in some places along with half my driveway and all of the walk. Walk in the grass and stomp your feet so you don't fall. You can go sledding down my hill with no sled it is that icy.
Back for further discussion later today!
I'm not a Rudy hater I just don't think he can win the Primary. And if he could, I don't think he could win the General.
The press may love his star power now but as soon as the primary is over he will be the GOP's sleeze bag (my idea of their take not necessarilly how I feel about him) night after night after night. I'm sorry, but sure, we understand divorce however when you're personal numbers affect the national statistic mmmmmm I don't know how that's gonna fly in a two year campaign.
"Hunter, because he doesn't have to backpedal and lie to appeal to conservatives (and I don't mean people like you)."
Hunter can't win the general. Conservatives can't win the general by themselves. And I am a conservative.
EXACTLY!! I read that it is going to take $100 Million Dollars in 2008 to run a successful presidential campaign! Scary!!
I think the cost was more than that in 2000.
"I'm sorry, but sure, we understand divorce however when you're personal numbers affect the national statistic mmmmmm I don't know how that's gonna fly in a two year campaign."
This is no shot at Ronald Reagan. I love Ronald Reagan. However he won despite being divorced and despite the fact Nancy was 3 months pregnant when they got married.
Once the MSM Foleys up Rudy real good
Wrong...
Nancy wasn't Reagan's 4th wife...
The base turned out in 2006. It was the moderates, independents, and libertarians that turned on us. Lets not have that happen again in 2008.
What brought that word to mind goes back to when my oldest daughter was in high school. They always held a contest for Miss BHS who was actually a football player dressed as a girl for one of the homecoming events. This linebacker in one of her classes shouts out when they told him that he had to dress up like a girl for the competition -- "I am a homophobe" and then a few choice words to say why he wouldn't dress up as a girl.
Everytime I see comments on here like today, it reminds me of her classmate and I laugh all over again. One of the guys who did dress up kept going up to him 'flirting' and he got furious. His fellow students had a ball with it as he never lived it down.
OK. I'll be coming by to shoot you later. Meet me at the door--I'm bringing my twelve guage, so as long as you don't run it will be quick and painless. When the cops arrive, I will show them your post and they will tip their hat and let me go on my way. After all, they wouldn't want to be the arbiter of whether you exist or not.
Just kidding!
Get the point? If a fetus is a person (and for those of us who live in the real world where science exists, it is) then the fact that he or she is in the womb has nothing to do with whether someone should be able to kill them.
And Judith Nathan isn't Giuliani's 4th either :)
When the woman carrying it decides to abort it.
Remember, only women can stop abortion.
Easy. The MSM is fractured. Audiences are fractured. The old political media model is shifting. Candidates such as Rudy will need tens of millions of dollars to achieve diminishing returns to convince the base to vote for them in the primary. Candidates such as Hunter will draw supporters more through non-traditional channels - because no hard-sell is needed. Dean followed this strategy and did well initially - he lost it with the famous shriek, not due to any inherent failings in his plan.
Once Hunter shows some strength, he will then start to draw more money.
BINGO!
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