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.
***As far as abortion goes, we have a pro-life President now but we are still having abortions. ***
See post 130. If there's nothing a President can do about it except appoint judges, why the long list?
***History always repeats itself.***
That is exactly why we'll have our butts handed to us if we run Rudy McRomney. Check this:
Just a little bit of history repeating itself (Freeper op-ed)
Freeport Ink (Illinois) | 16 Nov 06
Posted on 11/20/2006 9:14:38 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
Most post-election analyses are political Rorschach tests where the pundit looks at a tiny sample of information and tells you a lot more about his or her worldview than about what really happened, like a football fan guessing why his team lost a game he didn’t watch.
Still, from what we do know, we can come to two Rorshach-free conclusions. First, the electorate didn’t reject conservatism, only Republicanism. Most of the winners ran as conservative Democrats. Second, as Shirley Bassey would sing, “it’s all just a little bit of history repeating itself.”
Take a look at 1974 and 1976. It is true that 1974 was the year Watergate came to a head, and it was the sixth year of the Nixon presidency, but the Democratic sweep that year surprised everyone. They gained 49 house seats and 4 Senate seats, giving them a two thirds majority in the House and a 61-38 majority in the Senate. Why?
Ronald Reagan, speaking at the annual CPAC conference the next March, presented his answer. “Few, if any, Democratic Party candidates in the last election ran as liberals,” he said. “Listening to them I had the eerie feeling we were hearing reruns of Goldwater speeches. I even thought I heard a few of my own. Bureaucracy was assailed and fiscal responsibility hailed. …we must not forget that they molded their campaigning to fit what even they recognized was the mood of the majority.”
Reagan cited a number of polls which showed that more and more Americans were identifying themselves as conservatives. Yet the Republican president had expanded social spending dramatically, and the leaders of his party in Congress were glad to oblige him. Presented with a corrupt president and a spendthrift Congress, most of the Democrat “Watergate Babies” had run to the right of the GOP and their own party.
In 1976 the second part of the cycle played out. Though he ran as a moderate, almost every other quality Jimmy Carter had—plain-spoken Southerner, born again Christian, former nuclear submarine officer, etc.—pointed toward a traditional conservative outlook. Carter had even returned the death penalty to Georgia. Yet I hardly have to recount the disaster that was the Carter presidency, and as a result Reagan rolled into office.
The cycle repeated again in 1992. George H. W. Bush had violated his “no new taxes pledge” and was certainly no Reagan. He was seen as a tax and spend president out of touch with voters, and was defeated by a “New Democrat” promising cuts in taxes and budgets. But when Clinton got into office, he spent more than ever, raised taxes on the middle class and even on Social Security recipients, and tried to implement socialized medicine. So the public voted against Clinton the only way they could: they voted for conservative Republicans running on the “Contract With America.” in the 1994 midterm election. They gained 54 seats and the House was in GOP hands for the first time in 40 years.
Both times the GOP spent too much, seemed more concerned with “growth” than principle, lost touch with the mood of the nation and had a president who was too liberal. These conditions are present again, and so it seems we’re at the beginning of another cycle. There’s no doubt the war and the “six year itch” hurt them, but lack of principle made it possible for the Blue Dog Democrats to run against them from the right, claiming to be what the Republicans should be.
In 1975, Reagan said, “I don‘t know about you,” he said, “but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, ‘We must broaden the base of our party’—when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.” He believed that the Big Tent philosophy was a big loser, and disingenuous as well. “Who has ever been barred from participating?” he asked.
He went on: “Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?”
Like Carter and Clinton, the Pelosi Democrats will be unable to hide their true colors for long. They may be smart enough to realize that the public won’t tolerate impeachment or a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, but over the next two years the Blue Dogs will likely bend to Pelosi’s will and drop their supposed principles like a hot rock. If so, the voters will return a new generation of Reagan conservatives to power, but only if they’re carrying honesty in their hearts, and marching under a banner of bold colors.
Time to cue Shirley:
The word is about, there's something evolving,
Whatever may come, the world keeps revolving
They say the next big thing is here,
That the revolution's near,
But to me it seems quite clear
That it's all just a little bit of history repeating itself
Dear Dark Skies,
"lol...this thread needs much more such levity!"
Well, the originally-posted article by Mr. Murdock wasn't one to encourage levity.
I'm not sure rudybots generally understand how insulting and vile this article is to committed social conservatives, and especially to committed pro-lifers. Mr. Murdock's article, itself, is in extremely bad taste.
If one wishes to say, "Oh, we should vote for Mr. Giuliani IN SPITE of his being all-abortion-all-the-time," well, I disagree, and think that's a very, very poor idea.
But I don't view it as a direct insult.
However, to say that we pro-lifers should be HEARTENED by Mr. Giuliani's execrable record, as if we should be GRATEFUL for the record of this man who endorses legalized baby-murder up through labor, is just so disgusting that words fail me.
This is especially true in that Monday is the annual March for Life in DC, and is likely on the minds of many pro-lifers. Thus, the timing of this filthy sewage propagandistic trash only inflames.
If you were trying to post a thread that would be all sweetness and light, then I think you misjudged the piece that you posted.
sitetest
He cut taxes 22 times a Mayor of NYC!! That's hardly pro taxes. He turned NYC's deficit into a surplus. He cut over 600,000 off welfare. Rudy is against gay marriage. Besides that, marriage is a state issue, the President has no role at all in marriage issues. As far as guns go, who is pushing gun control now? Nobody. Nobody has since it cost Al Gore the election in 2000 and I don't think nobody will push it, including Rudy, in the future.
Nothing you say can hurt me. You're just showing tour foolish self.
1. Pro-Gay Marriage
- RUDY IS AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE and has said so!
2.Pro-Taxes -
Cutting Taxes
Rudy Giuliani cut more taxes than any Mayor in New York City history, reducing or eliminating 23 city taxes, saving individuals and businesses a cumulative $8 billion, while reducing New Yorkers’ tax burden by nearly 20%. By the end of Giuliani’s term in office, New Yorkers enjoyed their lowest tax burden in three decades, along with the creation of approximately 425,000 new private sector jobs.
Fiscal Responsibility Rudy Giuliani inherited a $2.3 billion dollar budget deficit and turned it into a multi-billion dollar surplus, while cutting taxes and delivering balanced budgets. He cut the number of full-time city workers by more than 20,000 – excluding teachers, firefighters, and police officers – while slowing the growth of government spending to below the rate of inflation.
As far as guns are concerned - Rudy has yet to say how he feels about that issue. What he has said in the past was connected to New York City and New York City ONLY - And apparently it worked for a city that was full of crime and drugs. I don't think he will even touch the gun issue when it comes to being president.
I not much of a fan of sweetness and light...too cloying for me. I like to stir up trouble.
Life is listed as a God given right in the Declaration of Independence.
The loss of life is prohibited in the US Constitution without due process.
The constitution AND the Declaration are on the side of life. If a candidate for a position that can affect this principle is unwilling then they are poor candidates period.
If Rudy is saying abortion is a matter for the states, i.e. Roe should be overruled, and makes a firm pledge to appoint judges of a like mind, then I'd consider him. If and when Roe is overruled, there won't be much more, if anything, for a President to do on the issue.
Damn pesky facts, always seem to get in the way of a full out bash and trash session.
Dear Dark Skies,
"'If you were trying to post a thread that would be all sweetness and light, then I think you misjudged the piece that you posted.'
"I not much of a fan of sweetness and light...too cloying for me."
I'll rephrase.
If you were trying to post a thread that would avoid vicious and ugly dialogue, and encourage good-hearted levity and humor, then you misjudged the piece that you posted.
"I like to stir up trouble."
Well, you got plenty of that, then. ;-)
sitetest
I know I just gotta stop!
Despite my dislike for Rudy's politics, 51 is spot on here.Not only is the living with gays thing not a real knock on Giuliani's character, it certainly won't play with the voters and will be spun as homophobia.
Yeah Dark Skies what did you go and do that for??? I'm sending you my Doctors bill in the morning! ;-)
AND
Anybody from BLUE STATE NJ who dares to repeatedly post "fair warning" merits ridicule
I think it's obvious that you are the hurter and those types are always hurtable. Make your points on the strength of your arguement and you will probably be dealt with in the same manner.
You and I both know which side of the coin the viciousness and ugliness on this thread comes from.
LOL! C-L-U-E-L-E-S-S.
Then all we have available to us are poor candidates, because no political candidate can change the course a woman takes if she decides to abort her baby.
Dear Dark Skies,
I think I know, and I think you know you know, but I think that we think different things.
I think the posting of the article, itself, was vicious and ugly. Thus, that is the source of the viciousness and the ugliness in this thread.
sitetest
Alright! We made progress here today. Remember, recognizing that you had a problem was the first step in getting better. ~~~Hug~~~
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