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.
A majority of Republican women are pro-choice, albeit they have a narrower view then their Democratic counterparts, however they are in no way in favor of banning abortions.
Advances in science and medical technology have completely destroyed the various myths used to support this "barbaric sacrament". Yet, its defenders and proponents continue with the same blind fervor as always.
Hunter? Hunter Thompson? I thought he died.
That dog don't hunt!
Funny, the article only mentions one issue. When we respond to that one issue, we're labelled one-hit wonders.
But that does not change the fact that there are plenty of other reasons to oppose Rudy as well, such as his stance on gun control and amnesty.
Yet another TRIAL BALLOOR for the Rudy exploratory committee.
SMILE FELLOW FREEPERS WE ARE BEING FOCUS GROUPED!
And don't forget pro-amnesty. Talk about having a trainload of baggage heading into primary season.
Why would you still support this joke when there are decent, viable conservative candidates, like Hunter?
Neither radical side of this issue wants Roe overturned. They would never get what they want from the voters.
"You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means" Princess Bride.
Wisest works I've heard today!
Duncan Hunter. The best possibility for conservatives (Not Rudy style republicans) to take the White House.
Sorta like "Common Sense Gun Laws".
Oops.
Words...not works.
Most folks, however, think that these constitute a majority of abortions.
__________
Where do you get this from? I'm sure you've got a legit poll that you are culling this statement from. Can you produce it?
I am calling you out on this one, as I think it is simply made up.
Dear ArrogantBustard,
This kind of cynical propaganda that appears to be oozing from regions near the Giuliani camp sickens, disgusts, and angers me.
Mr. Giuliani finds himself in a deep hole with committed social conservatives. He should learn the first rule of holes.
sitetest
Could you imagine if it was found out the Obama had Gay Roommates?
The Rudyistas would be going crazy.
But it was okay for their man Rudy to live with a couple of queers!
Come on, Rudy, show us what you can do in the real world, against a rabid goose! Hell, I would really be pleased if
Rudy was aware that MOST of us don't live in NYC, and don't even want to live there.
Tellyawhat I'm sure about, Rudy has never headed out to check the mail, and come up on a big cottonmouth with an attitude problem, sitting on the path. NYC gangbangers are no different from the snakes in my yard, simple to control, if you have the balls to do it!
There are at least a couple of "alternate realities" around, lots of problems, but if your solutions to the problems include clamping down on freedom, you are in the wrong party, and the wrong Nation.
But if he keeps on digging, he'll pop up in Australia ...
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