Negotiating the GOP’s Slippery Abortion Slope

U.S. Sen. John McCain had it right the first time when a reporter recently asked whether he would forbid his 15-year-old daughter from having an abortion if she got pregnant.

“No,” McCain replied as several reporters listened on his New Hampshire campaign bus, the “Straight Talk Express.”

“I would discuss this issue with Cindy [his wife] and Meghan [his daughter] and this would be a private decision that we would share within our family. . . . Obviously, I would encourage her to know that the baby would be brought up in a warm and loving family. The final decision would be made by Meghan. . . . “

Whoops!

That wasn’t going to sit well with the Republican religious right. So after he’d left the bus, the presidential candidate quickly phoned back a “clarification.”

“I misspoke,” McCain said. “What I believed I was saying . . . is that this is a family decision. The family decision would be made by the family, not by Meghan alone.”

Wrong!

Leaving aside the moral issue of whether parents should be allowed to force their daughter, against her will, to carry a child, there is an obvious issue of practicality: A pregnant woman who wants an abortion always has been able to get one, in some fashion.

But the significant issue here is what’s legal. McCain’s first answer was correct under the law. In his state of Arizona--as in California--the final decision is not the family’s. It belongs solely to the pregnant woman, regardless of age.

Arizona and California do not have parental consent laws. They did, but the statutes were tossed out by courts.

If you’re a parent, you ought to be thankful your daughter feels close enough to even confide her pregnancy.

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Abortion is a traumatic issue, personally and politically. The state Republican Party continued to wrestle with it over the weekend at a convention here.

To put this in perspective, it should be noted that the California GOP last year elected a chairman, Silicon Valley software entrepreneur John McGraw, who declared that “killing our babies [is] the issue of the century.”

The conservative-dominated organization Sunday adopted a new, slimmed down platform aimed at appeasing abortion-rights moderates. But the platform still called for “the protection of innocent human life at every stage, from the pre-born to the elderly . . . “ And moderates were not appeased. “A majority of Republicans around the state would not support this platform,” asserted former Assemblyman Brooks Firestone, a Santa Barbara centrist.

Polls tend to support Firestone’s view. The L.A. Times Poll in September 1998 found that 46% of California Republicans favored--and 38% opposed--the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that established basic abortion rights. Among all voters, 59% favored it and only 28% were opposed.

Rival U.S. Senate candidates expressed the gamut of abortion views at a convention debate. State Sen. Ray Haynes of Riverside was the most hard-line against abortion. San Diego County Supervisor Bill Horn opined that abortion was none of the federal government’s business; it should be left to the states. That, however, would require the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. The front-runner, Rep. Tom Campbell of San Jose, strongly advocated abortion rights.

McCain “was speaking from the heart” in his first answer, Campbell told delegates.

*

But in his “clarification,” the Arizona senator clearly was reading from an old GOP candidates’ manual. It warns that you must oppose abortion rights--be “pro life”--to win the Republican presidential nomination.

But there’s another manual that says a candidate must favor abortion rights--be “pro choice”--to carry California. Ronald Reagan was an anomaly.

There is a growing--if grudging--realization among GOP pols that the party has not been appreciably helping the anti-abortion cause, but the issue has been hurting Republican candidates.

At the convention, publisher Steve Forbes downplayed his advocacy of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment. McCain and Texas Gov. George W. Bush--who snubbed the convention--have been treading cautiously, both flying the pro life banner while subtly signaling the cause is not a top priority.

If asked, McCain will say he’d like to see Roe vs. Wade overturned. But he usually doesn’t bring it up and didn’t at the GOP convention.

No doubt, this father understands which of his answers was correct. Abortion is a woman’s decision. It may also be her family’s business--but not the government’s or a political party’s.