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.
Alright, I'm in enough trouble over that post already without you pilin' on!!! :)
Rudy's a tough SOB. I think he can handle Hillary. But, that said, this is gonna be a tough, dirty election.
Look peaches, I try to be nice to my fellow freepers here but enough is enough. You're not bright enough to use condescension effectively. When you state that the GOP will have to find a way to win without Evangelicals, it evidences not just a remarkable naivete about where the GOP gets it votes from but the statement means exactly what it says, that the GOP will have to split from the Evangelicals. The reason for that split can not mitigate the split itself, it is irrelevant to the fact that there must be a split in your hubris filled view. Comprende?
And now onto Global Warming. Please provide a poll, or some proof (any proof) showing Evangelicals abandoning the GOP in droves because of Global Warming.
Rudy's toughness is not the issue, the fabricated perceptions that will have to be dealt with is the issue. And you know the leftists worshipping at rodhamster's knee will make every effort to manipulate voters so the depth of the issues must be explored now, before the fact, to establish ways to deal with the deceptions and detritus.
"...alternative to abortion..."???
hmmmmm...Let me think...
Seems to me it takes two to tango...And there are too many people dancing that shouldn't be doing that in the first place...
The difficulty is that the main effort is trying to legislate social behavior...Very difficult to pass, yet even harder to enforce...
Even if you took away the ability to fund and perform abortive procedures, there is too much of a stigma in popular "liberal" thinking that abortion is just anothre form of birth control...But at the wrong time...
The way to stop unplanned pregnancies is to just stop tango-ing (until of course yer ready for the real fun in dealing with a human life)...But try to get that "just say no" idea into the over-hormonal driven teenage brain matter...
I do not share your belief that Rudy will not listen and adjust since I see he has done so in the past. I am absolutely certain hillary will not listen to any conservative voices because she is first and foremost a leftist democrat.
BTW, I just don't see Gulianni being nothing more than a nice guy, who did his city proud by doing what he could through a very serious, national crisis...He will always have my respect for that effort...
Everything else...nahhhh...
Well, that's certainly fair enough Marvin. We will see how Rudy finesses his support for partial birth abortion in the months to come.
I am absolutely certain hillary will not listen to any conservative voices because she is first and foremost a leftist democrat.
That she is.
"This is, of course, false. There are fewer abortions now than there used to be because of the bully pulpit and years of hard work."
There are fewer abortions now because there are fewer unwanted pregnancies. Teen pregnancy rates have been declining for years. There has been a change in education, no real significant chances hearts.
One of most important roles of the POTUS is to pick SCOTUS Judges.
Rudy has gone on the record with a totally satisfactory answer for Conservatives, and yet, it doesn't satisfy you.
One is never going to find, in real life, the ideal perfect candidate.
Politics is the art of the possoble.
Absolute nonsense. The baby boomer generation was the zenith for the "pro choicers', their progeny are much more pro life. So hearts and minds have been changed.
The anti-Rudy crowd ignore facts they don't like, trump up their differences with Rudy and ignore the issues they agree with him on, and ignore political realities or either they are naive and ignorant of these realities. There is no reasoning with them.
Today's 18-25 year olds are more socially liberal than any other age group. And yes, unwanted pregnancies and teen pregnancies have been dropping for years and that accounts for the drop in the number of abortions. Do you really believe we will reach a day where we can outlaw all abortions in all states?
"I only want to know one thing. Would Rudy appoint pro-life judges, a la Roberts and Alito. If so, I'd consider him."
read the article in post #202 He is your guy if you want another Ruth Bader Ginburg.
I would decline that offer.
Rudy has said he supports strict constructionist. He has said Scalia is his favorite justice. He said that Ginsburg was "good" in that she was qualified.
I’d give my daughter the money for it........
And this is where I have a problem with him. He doesn't like it, yet....
His character is flawed! If we can't trust him to uphold the most sacred contract he will ever enter in to, we can't trust him to uphold other laws. Besides, I will NOT vote for anyone who is anti gun. He cannot be trusted, so it really doesn't matter to me what his position is on anything else.
Truth matters.
And no I don't believe we will reach a day when all abortions can be outlawed. That says nothing about working toward the goal itself.
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