Posted on 01/22/2007 5:08:59 PM PST by TitansAFC
As pro-lifers mark the 34th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, many wonder whether they could support former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for president despite his pro-choice views. While 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 at 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.”
During his unsuccessful 1989 mayoral campaign, Giuliani said, “I’d give my daughter the money for it [an abortion].” That September 1, Newsday’s transcript of Giuliani’s comments suggested a less strident tone.
“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.”
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 over the course of the eight years before Giuliani, with 1985 witnessing 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.
The Centers for Disease Control reports that U.S. abortions fell from 1,330,414 in 1993 to 853,485 in 2001, a 35.85 percent decrease. However, University of Alabama political scientist Michael New tells me, “the national decline was so sharp because after 1997, three states, including California, quit reporting their abortions to the CDC.” Correcting earlier data by omitting the abortions in Alaska, California, and New Hampshire when calculating the national total prior to 1997, Professor New finds that 1993’s 1,001,769 abortions waned to 853,485 in 2001, a 14.8 percent fall-off.
“So, in percentage terms,” New adds, “the decline in abortions in New York City under Giuliani was greater than the national decline.”
(For a detailed chart analyzing these and other data, please click here.)
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 conscientious objectors 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.”
“Off the top of my head, I cannot recall any instances when Mayor Giuliani’s and John Cardinal O’Connor’s different positions on abortion came to the fore while O’Connor was New York’s archbishop,” said Joseph Zwilling, communications director for the archdiocese of New York, a position he held under O’Connor.
“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 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 the 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, 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.
— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution. Researcher Marco DeSena contributed to this piece.
The strategerizing continues on how to fool Pro-Lifers, gun owners, gay rights oppposers, et al.
Unbelievable.
The Rudy folks really do think we're all stupid. They really think that everybody is going to abandon every single social/cultural/moral issue important to them just for the honor of supporting Rudy Giuliani.
Meanwhile, all of his supporters will continue to smear doubters as Nazis, while his PR campaign tries to convince people Rudy won't actually be Rudy as President.
Nominating Rudy is good for pro-Lifers, can't you see. So says Deroy Murdoch.....
The pile gets higher, the stoop lower, and the zealots more insane every day.
Bttt
ita all about the judges. that's all its about. show me what kind of judges he'd choose, that's the key to the abortion issue.
However, I don't believe we're talking about the same zealots.
I'm pro life, but as a matter of policy I just want state legislatures and the people to decide the abortion policy.
I fully expect that in a post-Roe political landscape, every state would keep first trimester abortion legal.
What then, pro lifers? I'll be fine with the people deciding this way, even though I disagree with it. Indeed, it's way too late in the game to shift gears and suddenly say that the policy decision shouldn't be set by liberal judges, nor the electorate or legislators, but by conservative judges. That's whacked out, boys & girls.
exactly right. I think alot of pro-lifers have this vision that gary bauer or sam brownback is elected President - and the next day, abortion is illegal nationwide. there is of course, wrong.
its all about the SCOTUS judges - tossing Roe is the first step, then the battle goes into the states.
---"exactly right. I think alot of pro-lifers have this vision that gary bauer or sam brownback is elected President - and the next day, abortion is illegal nationwide. there is of course, wrong."---
Ah yes.
I refer you back to the "they really think we're stupid comment above."
Right on cue.
ITS THE JUDGES. show me the judicial philosophy of the judges Rudy would choose - don't tell me to look at what public comments he might have made while trying to run for mayor of NYC, a place with a 9:1 Dem registration. did you really think he could have a personal pro-life position, in that environemnt?
Its all a smokescreen. The averages dropped by a far greater percentage nationally than in NYC.
Its nothing more than a well financed story.
Oh I see,
so he's a liar who'll say anything to get elected.
I feel much better about Rudy now!
The issue goes back to the states. This is interesting, because it will impact state demographics in a substantial way.
in an environment where that decision is "closer" to the electorate, they can mount different political offensives. look, Roe has to go first - there is no way to return the issue to the states so long as it stands.
I also doubt that any state would outlaw 1st trimester abortions for adult women. but the states would do a better job enforcing late term abortion laws of their own, and parental consent laws. send it back to the states.
that's politics. did George Bush tell you he was for amnesty for illegals in the 2000 presidential race?
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I'm all for sending it back to the states, and would expect most (but not all) states to vote the conservative way on partial-birth abortion, parental notification, etc.
I don't think one state in the union would outlaw first trimester abortion - the most common. A pro life freakout would follow.
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