He chose an interview with the anti-abortion Sean Hannity, who is inexplicably besotted with the former mayor, to roll out his updated abortion position to a conservative audience. He told Hannity: "I hate it":
I think abortion is something that, as a personal matter, I would advise somebody against."
This is similar to something he said during his unsuccessful mayoral bid in 1989, except he left out the part where he said he would pay for his daughter's abortion. People who "hate" abortion don't usually pony up the cash to pay for one:
"I have a daughter now," Giuliani told TV’s Phil Donahue. "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."
He also said in the interview:
I've said that I'll uphold a woman's right of choice, that I will fund abortion so that a poor woman is not deprived of a right that others can exercise, and that I would oppose going back to a day in which abortions were illegal.
http://www.powers-point.com/2007/02/rudy-rehablitation-watch-he-was-against.html
BLITZER: How do you balance your historic support for closer relation with China, improved trade relations with China, with what many conservatives complain about, specifically the so-called forced abortions in China?
ROBERTSON: Well, you know, I don't agree with it. But at the same time, they've got 1.2 billion people, and they don't know what to do. If every family over there was allowed to have three or four children, the population would be completely unsustainable.
Right now, they run the risk of a tremendous unemployment. There are some antiquated factories that the government owns that have to be shut down that is going to put hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people out of work. And the leadership is like on a teeter-totter board, they can fall off if the population gets too restive.
So, I think that right now they're doing what they have to do. I don't agree with the forced abortion, but I don't think the United States needs to interfere with what they're doing internally in this regard.
BLITZER: But in effect, won't your critics on the right be saying that Pat Robertson is justifying abortions in China?
ROBERTSON: Well, I just think they need to get involved in what's happening.
But I'll tell you what the Chinese are doing, and it's going to be a demographic catastrophe. When they're having abortions, they're picking the girl babies for the slaughter, and they're allowing only the males to be born. And in another, say, 10 or 20 years, there's going to be a critical shortage of wives. The young men won't have any women to marry, so it will, in a sense, dilute the -- what they consider the racial purity of the Han Chinese.
And that to them will be a great tragedy, because then they will have to be importing wives from Indonesia and others countries in order to fill up the population.
Funding abortion is forcing people to, without constitutional authority, pay for something they deem to be absolutely abhorrent.
If the pro-aborts are so adamant, and they have such a large support base as they claim, they should set up their own fund to provide abortions/eugenics for the poor.