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Time - Man of the Year
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1992-09-22
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THE WEEK, Page 24NATIONThe G.O.P. Splits on The Abortion Plank
When the party platform is written, only antiabortion activists
need apply
Separated by a broad avenue and a score of broad-shouldered
Salt Lake City cops, two knots of demonstrators debated the
abortion issue with chants and placards. THE TIME TO CHOOSE IS
BEFORE BEDTIME, advised a pro-lifer sign. PARTY PLATFORM: OUT OF
BOARDROOMS, INTO WOMEN'S WOMBS took the originality prize among
the pro-choicers. Ann Stone, a conservative who usually supports
the President, elicited smiles on both sides of West Temple
Street when she cracked, "George Bush knows there are pro-choice
Republicans; he's married to one!"
There was no good humor indoors at the official
proceedings last week, as the Republican Platform Committee
staged its hearing on social questions. Since 1980 the platform
has taken a hard line against abortion and promoted the
appointment of jurists who back that view. Now, with the Supreme
Court poised to undermine or demolish Roe v. Wade, many
Republicans want the party to moderate its stance. Stone, a
direct-mail entrepreneur who has raised millions for
conservative causes, is collecting money for pro-choice
candidates.
She told the platform drafters that a party opposed to
government intrusion into other sectors of society has no
business promoting antiabortion legislation. "Are you all
Republicans?" she demanded rhetorically. "I'm not clear on
that." Mary Dent Crisp, a moderate who once served as the
party's co-chair, warned of wholesale defections at the polls:
"A woman's fundamental right to choose is far more important
than party loyalty."
While the rebellion by Stone, Crisp and others captured
media attention, their opponents held the high cards. Phyllis
Schlafly, head of the Republican National Coalition for Life,
insisted that neither Bush as a candidate nor the party as an
institution could afford to waffle "on a high moral principle."
The Bush campaign's representatives at the session quietly
agreed. Campaign officials, who control the platform, will
permit no compromise language and will probably be able to quash
efforts to debate the issue at the Houston convention. A
representative of the National Abortion Rights Action League
murmured, "This is an exercise in futility."
But from Bush's viewpoint, the exercise is also painful.
While his stance mollifies the moral conservatives whose support
he must have in November, it offends moderates whose votes he
would love to claim too. The House of Representatives gave him
another headache by voting, 260 to 148, to overturn the
Administration's ban on the use of fetal tissue obtained from
planned abortions for medical research. The restriction had been
imposed in response to pro-lifers' contention that use of such
tissue increases the number of abortions. Bush promises a veto,
which will almost certainly stick. His bona fides with his
party's far-right wing will be strengthened, but so will the
argument that he is a prisoner of a minority faction.