Dole Backs Ban on Abortion but Urges Tolerance

Moving to head off a potentially divisive fight at this summer’s national convention, Bob Dole issued a statement Thursday laying out the platform language he will accept on the issue of abortion--endorsement of a constitutional amendment to ban abortions plus a “declaration of tolerance” welcoming Republicans who differ on the subject.

“Since 1980, the Republican platform has included a statement of pro-life principle and supported a pro-life constitutional amendment,” Dole’s statement declared. “I will not seek or accept a retreat from those commitments.”

At the same time, Dole said, the platform should include language that recognizes “divergent points of view on issues such as abortion.”

“There are a number of issues” other than abortion “on which Republicans of goodwill disagree,” Dole declared, adding that “a decent regard for the opinions of those who disagree” is “not compromise, it is civility.”

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was nominated, the GOP platform contained the language Dole now advocates. In 1984 and subsequent years, however, antiabortion advocates succeeded in blocking any platform language that would officially recognize divergent views on the subject.

As adopted in 1992, the Republican platform declares that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life that cannot be infringed”--language that has been interpreted as not allowing abortions under any circumstances. Proposals to allow exceptions when pregnancy resulted from rape or incest or when the mother’s life was at stake were turned back by the party convention in 1988 and 1992.

The platform goes on to “reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution” and calls for “appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.”

Dole, himself, says he would ban abortions except for cases of rape, incest or to preserve a mother’s life.

If Dole’s gambit succeeds it could allow those who have advocated moderating the platform--including Gov. Pete Wilson and the governors of New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York and Wisconsin--to claim a victory of sorts by restoring the earlier language endorsing a diversity of views.

At the same time, his proposal could allow antiabortion advocates to assert that they had successfully headed off any move to weaken the party’s call for a ban on all abortions.

But on an issue as emotional--and as long fought-over--as abortion, persuading both sides to mutually declare victory is a difficult task. As party activists began reacting to Dole’s statement--released in the evening in Washington with little advance notice--it remained unclear whether Dole’s move would quiet the party’s storms or exacerbate them.

At least one governor who has called for moderating the platform declared herself satisfied. “I support it,” New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman said of Dole’s proposal. “He has always been an inclusive person, and I know that this step on his part is going to be one that opens the party and sends that message to everyone,” Whitman said in an interview on CNN.

But Wilson sounded a far less happy note.

“There will be many of us at the San Diego convention who are pro-choice and pro-Dole,” Wilson said in a statement read by aides in his Sacramento press office. “We respect Bob Dole and enthusiastically support his candidacy.

“But we feel strongly that the Republican Party can and should offer a more realistic and relevant response to questions about reproductive choice and privacy.”

Wilson’s press secretary, Sean Walsh, said that a Dole campaign official had attempted unsuccessfully to reach the governor earlier in the day to advise him about the Dole statement, but there had been no conversation between Dole and Wilson.

On the other side of the controversy, opinion was similarly split.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, a prominent Orange County conservative pastor and chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, declared support for Dole’s position. “The important point is that abortion is still not morally acceptable to a significant number of Republicans,” he said.

“If it’s acceptable to you, we don’t want you to leave the party. But I think the emphasis is still on the fact that abortion is not morally right,” he said. “I don’t see it as a sellout as long as we are able to say as the Republican Party we believe that abortion is still morally not appropriate.”

Similarly, Carol Long, political director for the National Right to Life committee said her organization--the nation’s largest antiabortion group--did not see Dole’s language as a retreat and would not oppose it.

But Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum and a prominent supporter of Patrick J. Buchanan’s presidential bid, denounced Dole’s idea.

“It’s not acceptable to single out the pro-life position and be equivocal about it,” she said. “Are you going to put a tolerance statement in front of every issue that’s controversial, like a flat tax and NAFTA and GATT? If you do that, there’s no point in writing a platform.”

As for Buchanan, himself, a spokesman said he would have no comment until today.

Dole and his strategists have been working for weeks to find a compromise on the issue that would give enough ground to placate the moderates--and avoid a potentially bitter fight over amending the platform--while not alienating the party’s antiabortion core.

A senior Dole aide said several prominent Republicans on both sides of the abortion issue had been consulted in advance and suggested a strategy along the lines of what Dole has now proposed. The one point antiabortion groups insisted on, the aide said, was that whatever “statement of tolerance” is placed in the platform should not single out abortion as the only issue on which Republicans differ.

The aide said the campaign had been planning to issue the abortion statement last week, as part of an effort to “put the political house in order” before the convention. But when the jury in the Whitewater trial in Little Rock, Ark., delivered its guilty verdicts, campaign aides changed course, not wanting to do anything to distract attention from a story that embarrassed President Clinton.

Thursday, Dole gave an interview to ABC News in which he seemed to suggest he would accept changes in the substance of the abortion plank. Campaign officials, fearing the interview would once more arouse controversy, decided late in the day to release the written statement to make Dole’s position clear.

Party professionals said Dole’s move represented a gamble that he probably had to take to head off an embarrassing show of divisiveness at the San Diego convention.

“The calculation you make by doing this is that you save face for the governors,” said David Keene, a longtime Dole advisor, chairman of the American Conservative Union and a foe of abortion. “Then you bet that since you haven’t changed the substance of the plank, even if some people gripe, most people are going to say, ‘Hey, Dole has said he’s not going to compromise on this principle, and the party’s position is clear. So what’s to complain about?’ ”

Buchanan, who has repeatedly vowed to oppose any change in the platform language, would probably seek to make an issue of Dole’s proposal, Keene predicted. But, Keene said, Dole strategists were betting that he could not get widespread backing for a fight among the convention delegates.

Times staff writers Robert Shogan, Edwin Chen and Ronald Brownstein contributed to this story.