Loss of Children Shared but Candidates Split on Abortion

The shared experience of losing a young child brought the two presidential candidates briefly closer during Thursday night’s debate. But the two men remained far apart on the difficult question of when abortion should be allowed, and who should make the choice.

In response to a question about whether he would permit a woman to have an abortion if she learned that her unborn child had a congenital condition that would prove fatal soon after birth, Vice President George Bush recalled the loss of his daughter, Robin, at age 3 from leukemia.

“I hope it doesn’t get too personal, or maudlin,” Bush said. “Bar (his wife, Barbara) and I lost a child; you know that. We lost a daughter, Robin. . . . Went to the doctor; the doctor said--beautiful child--’Your child has a few weeks to live.’ And I said, ‘What can we do about it?’ He said, ‘No, she has leukemia, acute leukemia, a few weeks to live.’ ”

The baby was kept alive for six months and then died, Bush said. But he added that he still opposed abortion in such cases because medical science can now keep such children alive much longer, or cure them.

Makes Exception in Cases of Rape, Incest

His position in the campaign has been that abortion should be legal only in cases of rape or incest, or to save the mother’s life.

“If that child were here today . . . that child could stay alive for 10 or 15 years, or maybe for the rest of her life,” Bush said. “And so, I don’t think that you make an exception based on medical knowledge at the time.”

Bush then acknowledged that he has had a difficult time wrestling with the abortion question and that he understood that many disagreed with him.

“And, so, I just feel this is where I’m coming from,” he said. “And it is personal. And I don’t assail him on that issue, or others on that issue. But that’s the way I, George Bush, feel about it.”

Dukakis Relates Similar Experience

Gov. Michael S. Dukakis related a similar touching tale.

“Kitty and I had very much the same kind of experience that the Bushes had,” he said. “We lost a baby--lived about 20 minutes after it was born.”

But Dukakis said he remained convinced that the abortion decision should be solely in the woman’s hands, not left to politicians or judges.

“But isn’t the real question that we have to answer, not how many exceptions we make--because the vice president himself is prepared to make exceptions--it’s who makes the decision?” Dukakis said. “Who makes this very difficult, very wrenching decision?

“And I think it has to be the woman, in the exercise of her own conscience and religious beliefs, that makes the decision. Who are we to say, ‘Well, under certain circumstances it’s all right, but under other circumstances it isn’t’? That’s a decision that only a woman can make after consulting her conscience and consulting her religious principles.”