Giuliani’s choice

RUDOLPH W. GIULIANI may or may not have helped his presidential campaign by unambiguously identifying himself as pro-choice on abortion, first in a speech last week in Texas and again in Tuesday night’s debate in South Carolina. Either way, the former New York mayor has done a service to Republican voters by clarifying his views instead of fudging them for primary season.

Giuliani, whose support for abortion rights has long been part of his political persona, angered some pro-choice activists when he said it would be “OK” if Roe vs. Wade were overturned but equally OK if a “strict constructionist judge” respected Roe as precedent.

Under criticism from both sides, Giuliani reclaimed his pro-choice roots last week in a speech at Houston Baptist University, saying that although he considers abortion morally wrong, he “would grant women the right to make that choice.” And in Tuesday’s debate, he said, “I ultimately do believe in a woman’s right of choice....” Agree or disagree, Giuliani has drawn a line and positioned himself clearly on one side of it.

Granted, the line is blurry in places -- some politicians, and some citizens, oppose only late-term abortions; others support legal abortion but oppose government funding for the procedure, and some believe that abortion should be legal in most cases but not all.

But those subtleties can’t obscure the deep divide between those who believe abortion is morally equivalent to murder and those who believe that the moral cost is trumped by a woman’s freedom of choice. Giuliani is on one side of that chasm, as are Democrats such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). On the other side are many, if not most, of the Republicans who will choose the party’s 2008 presidential nominee.

For Giuliani, who has been competing for the early front-runner spot with Arizona Sen. John McCain, clarity on this issue could be risky. A New York Times/CBS poll in March indicated that 41% of Republicans thought abortions should be banned (compared with 23% of all Americans) and that 53% favored a presidential nominee who would make abortions harder to get. Professor Philip Klinkner of Hamilton College in New York analyzed data from the 2004 election and found that more than one-third of Republican primary voters wanted to ban all abortions.

In his Texas speech, Giuliani pleaded with Republicans not to allow differences about abortion to prevent them from “uniting around broad principles that will appeal to a large segment of this country.” Otherwise, he warned, “we are going to have someone in the White House with whom I believe many of us would disagree with in regard to very, very big things, like where do we go on terror? Where do we go on the economy?”

Antiabortion activists may not be persuaded by that pitch, but at least Giuliani -- quite unlike McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- isn’t vaulting rightward on social issues to pander to the GOP base.