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.
BINGO!!! The Moderates, Independents and Libertarians voted Democrat.
It will take what it takes. You will be surprised at how much money each nominee of the two major parties raises.
Bush wasn't that big a deal 'till he got the nomination.
Another way to think of this would be to compare H. Rodhamster's likelihood of changing her approach (or any damned democrat for that matter) to abortion if she gets elected to highest office (knowing democrats have purposely supported and defended the slaughter of alive unborn in order to empower their election prospects), compared to a Republican wrestling with this horrific issue, being chosen to lead US, and listening to the voices of those who did not completely agree with him but voted him into leadership anyway.
I have no idea what your point was.
Funny, the GOP wasn't that much different in 2006 than it was in 2004 and 2002 when it did quite well.
The main thing that changed was rampant earmarks and corruption and other scandals.
FROM REDSTATE.ORG
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
Rudy is conservative on fiscal, domestic, and foreign policy issues. You diehard unpragmatic, all or nothing social conservatives forget this. Hillary and Obama are not fiscal, domestic and foreign policy conservatives but I forgot, you're all or nothing.
Jeeze I'm wondering when it will hit the $1 Billion mark! YIKES!!
When pro-lifers ot pro-gun folks oppose Rudy, they're called single issue nuts. But one can make list of several issues he is dead wrong on, and all of them together are a huge problem.
"Funny, the GOP wasn't that much different in 2006 than it was in 2004 and 2002 when it did quite well.
The main thing that changed was rampant earmarks and corruption and other scandals."
I think you're forgetting about one thing....IRAQ!!!
Rudy also said that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a good justice.
He said "good" as in qualified. You're taking him out of context.
And that sent women independents and moderates to the democrat columns.
Ya gotta do what ya gotta do ... and emergency preparedness trumps political blather. Good luck and God Bless.
Wait, you were just saying the GOP didn't appeal enough to moderates in 2006.
Now you're saying Iraq was a key factor. Rudy supports the war in Iraq. So he would therefore be a loser in 2008.
By that logic, we should all support Chuck Hagel (shudder).
So why not draft Hillary? She is "electable" and would get the media working for a GOP candidate.
If all the GOP can offer is DNC light, then it will end as a party.
Being ugly to someone because of the foolishness of others in their state? This from somone in the pack of inbread idiots who brought us Trent the loser Lott?
>I disagree with all 3 points. OK maybe not fully disagree on point 2 as phrased, but why do you think it would be just conservatives voting for a conservative? Wouldn't a good candidate have broad appeal, or are you saying we need to abandon conservative principles and go with a POS like rudy?
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.