Forbes Offers Support for Limited Ban on Abortion; Activists Remain Skeptical

For the first time, Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes said Friday that he would ultimately support banning abortion “except in cases of genuine, life-threatening emergency, or rape and incest.”

Forbes’ comments, made in a telephone interview with The Times, came as the influential Christian Coalition prepared to begin distributing on Sunday the first of 22 million voter guides portraying him as opposed to the group’s position on banning abortion.

Up until now, Forbes’ remarks about abortion have been so carefully nuanced that both abortion supporters and opponents have expressed confusion over exactly where he stands. Forbes’ comments to The Times mark his clearest identification with the anti-abortion cause, and could blur a politically risky contrast with his principal rivals for the GOP presidential nomination.

In the interview, Forbes again argued that until underlying American attitudes toward abortion had changed, attempting to enforce a law banning it would be no more successful than Prohibition. “The key is changing public opinion and the culture, and the law will be a ratification of where America is already at,” he said.

Asked if his ultimate goal was to make abortion illegal, Forbes at first said: “The only way you can make it illegal is if you bring people along.” Asked again if he would personally support making abortion illegal if public attitudes shifted, Forbes said that he would, with the exceptions of rape, incest, and life of the mother.

“That makes him pro-life,” said Peter Wehner, policy director of Empower America, a conservative think tank whose board of directors Forbes chaired before he joined the presidential race. “In terms of the real-world effects, compared to Bob Dole or Phil Gramm or Lamar Alexander, that makes him just as credible as any of them as a pro-life candidate.”

But Colleen Parro, director of the Republican National Coalition for Life, said Forbes’ comments were unlikely to improve chilly relations between him and the anti-abortion forces within the party.

“What he is saying is not based on anything he intends to do,” she said. “It is based on some nebulous reversal of the moral climate in America, which hasn’t happened and isn’t going to happen anytime soon. If you think that killing babies before they are born is a bad thing, then you don’t sit around and wait for the culture to change: You do something about it.”

Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition’s executive director, said Forbes’ comments amounted to an admission that any Republican seriously contesting the nomination “feels he has to identify himself as pro-life.” But Reed added that Forbes may still have trouble attracting social conservatives to his stand. “Forbes is offering a nuanced position on abortion in an environment that doesn’t lend itself to nuance,” he said.

Forbes’ remarks on abortion constitute his second recent effort to move rightward and narrow potential differences with social conservatives. In January, Forbes told the Armed Forces International Journal that he would not seek to overturn President Clinton’s policy allowing gays to serve in the military: “On the subject of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ I say don’t change,” Forbes wrote.

But more recently, Forbes has said he would change the policy--which most social conservatives oppose--if the military urged him to do so. “I would take the advice of our senior military commanders,” he said in the interview.

Forbes’ initial positions on social issues won him kind words from moderate Republicans but have generated increasing fire from social conservatives. Over the past several weeks, several leading conservative activists, including Phyllis Schlafly, have accused Forbes of attempting to obfuscate positions that they maintain amount to a pro-abortion-rights stance. The National Right to Life Committee publicly has declared Forbes--along with Alexander and fringe candidate Morry Taylor--as one of three Republican contenders “unacceptable” to the group.

Schlafly and Parro, who are leading an effort to resist changes to the anti-abortion language in the Republican platform, have distributed a press release citing several 1995 newspaper stories that say Forbes supports abortion rights during the early months of pregnancy. None of the stories, however, quote Forbes directly on the point.

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Citing similar articles, GOP presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan ran radio ads during the recent Alaska straw poll accusing Forbes of supporting “abortion on demand during the first six months” of pregnancy. Buchanan narrowly defeated Forbes in the contest.

The Christian Coalition voter guide, which was compiled based on a questionnaire submitted to the candidates, lists Forbes as opposed to “prohibit[ing] abortion” even with exceptions for life of the mother, rape and incest. “To say he is ultimately for” banning abortion is one thing, Reed said. “We are talking about whether you would support [a ban] now.”

The coalition has not endorsed a candidate in the race. But its voter guide could influence thousands, if not millions, of social-conservative voters. The group will begin distributing the guide Sunday to churches in Louisiana--which will hold its presidential caucuses on Tuesday--and then will distribute about 250,000 copies through 800 churches next weekend in Iowa. Iowa holds its caucuses, which constitute the first full-scale confrontation between the candidates, a week from Monday.

Reed says the group’s polling suggests that as many as 40% of those attending the Iowa caucuses will be religious conservatives; other campaign operatives put the figure at about 25%. In either case, the impact of religious conservatives on the Iowa result may be somewhat diluted because they are likely to split among Dole, Gramm, Buchanan and Alan Keyes.

The real impact of the religious right could come as the field winnows--and the race moves into the South in early March. Even if Forbes emerges from the early contests as one of the survivors in a two-man race, he could have great difficulty climbing to the nomination if social conservatives unify en masse behind his opponent, many analysts argue.

But Forbes’ latest statement on abortion could narrow the distance on the volatile issue between him and Dole--who also supports a constitutional ban on abortion, with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. Parro, for instance, said that Forbes’ position now is “essentially not” different from Dole’s.

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Forbes’ comments leave him to the left of Gramm, who supports a constitutional ban on abortion with an exception only for the life of the mother, and Buchanan who supports a ban with no exceptions. But Forbes’ statement moves him to the right of Alexander, who says that he supports state restrictions on abortion but that he would not seek a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision establishing a federal right to the procedure.

The controversy and confusion over Forbes’ position on abortion reflects the increasingly complex internal Republican politics on the issue. Traditionally the GOP has divided between anti-abortion forces, who want the party platform to retain its call for a complete ban on abortion, and abortion rights forces who want the party to remain silent on the issue.

More recently, a third force has developed: conservatives who call themselves anti-abortion but say the GOP should drastically alter its tactics. This camp--which includes former Education Secretary William J. Bennett; Wehner, Bennett’s aide at Empower America, and William Kristol, publisher of The Weekly Standard--argues that the GOP should take inspiration from Abraham Lincoln’s stand on slavery before the Civil War. Like Lincoln, who initially sought to restrict the spread of slavery but not emancipate the slaves in the South, they argue conservatives should seek to first “quarantine” abortion and reduce its incidence with incremental limitations, rather than alienate the public by seeking to ban it immediately.

Even with this latest statement, Forbes’ comments place him squarely within that camp. Forbes has said repeatedly that he wants “abortions to vanish in America.” But he has also said he would not seek a constitutional amendment to ban abortion or to overturn Roe vs. Wade because there is no public consensus at this time that would support such an action.