GOP Comes to Its Senses on Abortion

Who would ever have thought?

Of all the possible post-impeachment scenarios, you might expect: Bill Clinton resigns in disgust and disgrace; voters reject all Republicans who voted to impeach; Congress rewrites the Constitution to include personal misbehavior as an “impeachable offense”; Janet Reno fires Ken Starr . . . .

Yet none of those most-likely-to-happen events happened or ever will. Instead, the most unlikely post-impeachment scenario of all is happening: Republicans are thinking of having an abortion.

Yes, in order to rescue the Republican party from the death grip of the religious right, no less a Republican leader than New York Gov. George Pataki has proposed aborting the anti-abortion language of the GOP platform fathered by Ronald Reagan in 1984.

“I consider myself a conservative because I believe in limited government,” Pataki said last week. “I don’t think Washington and government should be telling my wife and daughter what their decision should be in a deeply personal matter.”

Republicans have moved to the middle on abortion. No wonder hard-liners Pat Buchanan and Gary Bauer are throwing a temper tantrum.

“It’s a cop-out,” insists Bauer, “Unworthy of a great political party.” Buchanan warns: “I’m not for throwing anyone out of the Republican Party, but I do think you will start a civil war in that party if you try to take Ronald Reagan’s pro-life plank out of that platform.”

But, suddenly, Bauer and Buchanan are in the minority--even among Republican presidential candidates, all of whom label themselves pro-life.

Arizona’s John McCain has expressed his support for returning to the 1980 party platform, which recognized “differing views” on the abortion issue. Candidates Steve Forbes and Lamar Alexander both agree that since there is no public support for an anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution, there is no sense pursuing it. And GOP front-runner George W. Bush, who supports abortion in the case of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother, has admitted that, while he personally opposes Roe vs. Wade, he knows the majority of Americans do not. Therefore, suggests Bush, Republicans should abandon their direct attack on abortion in favor of incremental viable steps like education and adoption.

Not only that, but Bush’s softer abortion stance has been publicly supported by none other than Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson. Sounding downright reasonable, Robertson told CNN’s Larry King: “As long as that is on the books and they say it’s a constitutional right, there isn’t a thing in the world you can do about it unless you change the Supreme Court. So, we might as well take the incremental approach and say, well, how many lives can we save?”

Pat Robertson going soft on abortion? Expect pigs to fly first. But Republicans are smart to take a second look at abortion, and not just for political reasons.

Politically, of course, it’s a no-brainer. Absolute opposition to abortion has won Republicans the undying loyalty of their conservative base: the extreme religious right. But it’s also cost them the support of most women voters. In 1996, pro-choice Clinton had a 16-point margin over pro-life Bob Dole among women voters.

A middle ground on abortion offers Republicans one other advantage: They can stop talking about it. Consider this. Now, every day of the week, Republican candidates are painfully discussing their differences on abortion while Al Gore is running around the country talking about jobs, education, Social Security and Medicare. Which issues do Americans care most about?

But the most important reason for Republicans to rethink their absolute opposition to abortion is that it’s the right thing to do. Nobody’s encouraging women to have abortions, but the majority of Americans do support a woman’s right to make that decision herself and not have it dictated by some pious gaggle of middle-aged white men in Washington.

A woman’s right to choose is part and parcel of the right we Americans value most: the right of privacy. “If the right of privacy means anything,” Justice William Brennan wrote in 1965, “it is the right of the individual . . . to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”

It is time for the GOP to once again affirm that fundamental right.