AFL-CIO Panel Refuses to Back Either Side in Abortion Debate

The anti-abortion movement won a political victory Tuesday when the AFL-CIO Executive Council voted overwhelmingly in Chicago to keep organized labor neutral on the question of abortion.

While national labor leaders “resent and resist government intrusion into matters that are essentially private,” they will defer “to the individual judgments” of the AFL-CIO’s 90 unions and 14 million members, the executive council said in a written statement.

The labor federation’s leaders, who risked alienating major portions of their membership regardless of what they did, came under pressure to take a stand in favor of a woman’s legal right to an abortion at last November’s constitutional convention.

Several unions with large female memberships offered abortion-rights resolutions, only to see them referred to the executive council, which subsequently created a special 18-member committee to study the issue.

Advocates said an abortion-rights position would put the federation in line with many of its political allies, such as the Democratic Party and various women’s, civil rights and poverty groups. They also said it would help recruit women by countering labor’s conservative, male-dominated image.

However, the debate angered some Catholic clergymen with long ties to labor, as well as some conservative union leaders, who argued that abortion was outside the realm of “workplace” issues and would split the already weakened labor movement.

Cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York said if labor adopted an abortion rights position, union members in opposition should be allowed to “send their (union) dues” to the anti-abortion movement. A 1988 Supreme Court case gave workers some flexibility in that direction. It held that employees who are required to pay union dues as a condition of employment have the option of withholding a portion of their dues, paying only the share that funds the union’s collective bargaining and contract administration activities.

The abortion argument has also troubled the American Bar Assn. since its House of Delegates voted 238 to 106 last February in favor of a resolution supporting a woman’s right to an abortion. More than 1,300 members have resigned.