GOP Platform Panel Refuses to Modify Abortion Stance : Campaign: The ‘right to life’ position is reaffirmed as the 1990 tax increase signed by Bush is repudiated.

After a one-sided but impassioned debate waged on both political and moral grounds, a Republican Party platform subcommittee meeting here Monday voted overwhelmingly against efforts to modify the party’s long-standing opposition to abortion.

Despite the 17-3 vote against her cause, Ann Stone, chairwoman of Republicans for Choice, vowed that more efforts will be made today when the full 107-member platform committee is expected to begin consideration of the draft platform. The finished document will then be submitted to the Republican National Convention, which opens here Monday to renominate President Bush.

Another subcommittee repudiated the 1990 tax increase signed by President Bush, sending a signal that Republicans believe Bush badly damaged himself and his party by breaking his “no new taxes” pledge. An amendment to the draft platform blamed the increases on Democrats in Congress and called for their repeal.

The drafting sessions, conducted by five subcommittees, marked the start of the party’s pre-convention proceedings which Florida Rep. Bill McCollum called “the first day of the reelection campaign of George Bush and Dan Quayle.” His comment touched off an ovation from the platform committee members all too aware of the faltering start in Bush’s general election campaign.

Republicans clearly sought to use the platform to bludgeon Clinton with charges that his election would mean a return to what Republicans refer to as past Democratic policies of big spending and high taxes.

Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles contrasted the GOP’s draft platform with the Democrats’ final document. “It didn’t say much,” Nickles said. “Except that if you read it closely you will see that it says ‘more government.’ ”

But in terms of intensity of feeling, such partisan rhetoric was no match for the highly personal and often poignant tone of the hourlong debate over the abortion plank conducted by the subcommittee on individual rights.

The 1992 draft, which closely tracks anti-abortion language in Republican platforms since Ronald Reagan was first nominated for the presidency in 1980, declares “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed,” reaffirms support for an anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution and urges the appointment of judges “who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.”

“What’s in me, is not a rock. . . . it’s a human life, that’s now kicking me,” said Mary Potter Summa, who chaired the subcommittee and defended the draft platform’s abortion ban. An assistant district attorney from Charlotte, N.C., who already has one child, Summa said she is 4 1/2 months pregnant.

Virginia Phillips, 67, of Alaska, said she had an abortion much earlier in her life, because her husband did not want the child. “The bottom line is it was violent,” she said. “ . . . It was violent to my body.” She urged the committee to show its concern and “loving for women,” by adopting language that would continue to oppose abortion.

But there were strong feelings on the other side of the issue, too. Mabel (Bobbi) Breske of Delaware, who has three children, three stepchildren and six grandchildren, said that other Republicans in her home state with whom she had discussed the abortion issue had “without exception” expressed concern that the platform’s opposition to abortion makes no allowances for victims of rape and incest, particularly for young women who have have suffered from such crimes.

In other situations, “we show concern for crime victims,” Breske argued. “Are we to just neglect them (victims of rape and incest) . . . or leave them to the back alleys?” she asked.

Breske said that she supported language that would give rape and incest victims “an alternative” to carrying their pregnancies to term. But parliamentary maneuvering by abortion foes prevented Breske from actually offering an amendment to modify the abortion ban. Breske had only two allies on the committee, Mary Wiese of South Dakota and Deborah Leighton of Massachusetts. “I want to appeal to this group to go back to their constituents” and ask them about the abortion issue,” said Wiese, a longtime Republican activist and former Reagan-Bush campaign worker.

“I feel very strongly about this issue,” she said. “But I feel even more strongly (about its effect on) the Republican Party.

Leighton contended that the effect of the ban was too sweeping and rigid and that some way should be found to show that the Republican Party was open to people “who hold a variety of opinions on the issue.”

But such views were far outnumbered on the subcommittee. Illinois Rep. Henry J. Hyde, a longtime abortion foe on Capitol Hill, reminded the committee of the “inalienable right to life,” asserted in the Declaration of Independence.

“Rights conflict,” Hyde said. “A woman who wants to exercise her sovereignty over her body,” by having an abortion, “conflicts with the right to life.”

Others on the subcommittee disputed the assertion by abortion-rights advocates that the anti-abortion plank was politically damaging and claimed instead that the majority of voters were opposed to abortion.

At any rate, said Keith Butler of Michigan, “this is an issue that transcends politics.” And Butler, a black, likened the Supreme Court’s decision supporting the right to abortion to the pre-Civil War Dred Scott ruling that upheld slavery.

For the Republicans to switch their position on abortion now, “would send a wrong signal,” Butler maintained. “It would look like we were fudging,” he said.

Although the debate over abortion is expected to continue during the full platform committee deliberations this week, it is questionable whether abortion-rights advocates have enough strength to carry their fight to the floor of the convention itself. Stone said after Monday’s session that her side could count on only 25 votes on the 107-member committee, two short of the 25% required to get a minority report debated on the floor.

Abortion was not the only issue that provoked disagreement and controversy at the platform committee’s opening session. Angela (Bay) Buchanan, who chaired her brother Pat’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, held a press conference to release Buchanan’s own proposed party platform.

Buchanan calls for increased emphasis on term limits for politicians, urges the President to test the constitutionality of the line-item veto, and backs the phasing out of foreign aid. His platform urges a freeze on new federal spending and hiring, and revocation of the recent congressional pay raise. It also calls for stepped up enforcement against illegal immigration, including construction of walls at points along the Mexican border with California and Texas, and denying most-favored-nation status in trade “to governments like the communist regime in China that murder and repress their own people.”

Buchanan will address the convention Monday night at Bush’s personal request, according to Buchanan’s sister.

Meanwhile, on the subcommittee dealing with economic policy, Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber, one of a group of conservatives who have been urging Bush to take a bolder stand on economic policy, won approval for an amendment condemning the tax increases in the 1990 budget agreement as a mistake and calling for their repeal. Bush had endorsed the tax hikes, reversing his 1988 campaign pledge “read my lips, no new taxes.”

“The Democratic Congress held America hostage, refusing to take even modest steps to control spending, unless taxes were increased, and the American economy has suffered,” the amendment claims.