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.
??????????????????????????! BS
Huh? Where did I say the GOP should be split? Sheesh, talk about reading something into my post that wasn't there.
My point, which clearly you missed, is that I don't see the GOP buying into the global warming baloney, but the Evangelicals now see it as a burning moral/global issue. So the GOP can't count on that vote anymore and so will have to find other ways to win without them.
So what are they going to do without the Evangelical vote? They're going to move to the middle. So they need candidates that appeal to moderates.
NYC politics is excellent preparation for national campaigns. And Rudy will handle things with aplomb.
When America sees Rudy in debates, they are going to see someone who can speak extemporaneously on any issue and think on his feet. Plus, Rudy's sense of humor and self-deprecating nature is going to drive the Rudy-haters into a state apoplexy (you can see much evidence of said apoplexy on this thread).
LOL, that the best you can do?
I read your 89 and here's a dose of reality. Bush signed the PBA ACT. Clinton vetoed it. Rudy has said he would have upheld Clintons veto. Another dose of reality. The last pro choice republican POTUS we had was Gerald Ford. He gace us Justice JP Stephens and thought his choice an excellent one until the day he passed.
You want to support a guy who is okie dokie with dismembering partially born babies, that's fine. Just try to avoid urinating down my leg and tell me it's raining out.
There are plenty of supply side, fiscally responsible, pro growth candidates who will do their best to win the WOT and prevent fully grown babies in the womb from being torn limb from limb. Some of them have even laced up a pair of combat boots.
Nothing like saying a poster doesn't care about a given issue when he hasn't mentioned those issues and those issues are not the focal point of the thread.
Methinks we're gonna see a lot of this nonsense from the RINO candidates in the months to come.
Well said.
I like a couple of the candidates, but think Rudy would make an excellent president. All I know right now is I'm voting for whichever candidate has the (R) after his name.
What cracks me up about the single issue freepers on this thread is that with Democrats in control, we're going to get attacked and live like the Israelis with truck bombs and suicide bombers. It will tank our economy.
Abortion will be the absolute LAST thing on the minds of Americans within 10 years if we keep putting Democrats in power. Bank on it.
Gawd, that quote has been on my mind a lot over the last few days reading some of the McPublican threads.
Rudy has said Roberts and Scalia are his ideal justices.
"There are plenty of supply side, fiscally responsible, pro growth candidates who will do their best to win the WOT and prevent fully grown babies in the womb from being torn limb from limb."
IMO, NONE of them can win in 2008. So if want to give up all the issues, including by far the most important issue, the WOT, to Hillary and Obama, go ahead. Nobody else other than McCain can beat them. The political reality is we will never be able to stop abortions even if Roe gets overturned. Secondly, there is already a ban on partial birth abortions so its now a moot point.
UMMMM Yes they are:
Evangelical Leaders Join Global Warming Initiative
Hello? Who said I was writing them off? Do you people think you can make a single post on this thread without mis-interpreting what I've said? If not, just let me know.
What I said was that the GOP was going to have to find a way to win votes without the Evangelicals now that the Evangelicals have aligned themselves with the global warming hysterics and that this would require the GOP to move to the middle.
Now, you tell me where that says I've written off the GOP. I'll wait while you find it.
And, btw, a simple answer on your part would have been that it is not true (despite numerous articles) that Evangelicals are aligning themselves with global warming nutjobs. I'd buy that; I know how the media spins things. But you all would just rather jump off half cocked and read things into posts that aren't there. Stop it!
Like you I spent many years in NYC and saw first hand what Rudy did. And like you I believe this war is by far the most serious issue facing the U.S. and the world.
What you should do is try to get a law passed that will make abortion=murder and the woman the murderer...good luck with that.
"Nothing like saying a poster doesn't care about a given issue when he hasn't mentioned those issues and those issues are not the focal point of the thread."
I've been trying to make these the focal points of the thread all along. Go back to my first post, #89 and you will see that. These issues should be the focal point of every thread concerning the 2008 election. Of course you don't want to make these issues the focal point of the thread, you agree with Rudy on these issues and God forbid you ever admit you agree with Rudy on something.
The core topic of the thread from the posted article is abortion. Saying that someone doesn't care about the other issue because they are focusing on abortion for this thread is disingenious.
I like your tagline. Maybe you need to read a few more Proverbs about fools before you speak.
Gov. Arnold of CA wants the GOP and the RATS to make bi-partisan efforts to stop global warming. RINOS like Gov. Arnold of CA have fully embraced global warming too
No they aren't.
If you go back and reread post #336 you will see that jwalsh said that Rudy, like Hillary, would not address ANY of his concerns. So bringing up other issues is very valid unless jwalsh isn't concerned with the WOT, taxes, ect.
Yes, many of them are.
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