Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 18, 1993 TAG: 9303180549
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
REPUBLICANS
THE ABORTION issue has brought Republicans great grief.The absolutist anti-abortion language of its platform hurt the party in the 1992 presidential election. Here in Virginia, Democratic Gov. Douglas Wilder owes his 1989 election in part to Republican nominee Marshall Coleman's adoption of a hardline anti-abortion position.
So Del. Clinton Miller of Shenandoah County has a point. Miller, a candidate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, said last week that the state convention in June should pass a resolution calling for elimination of the anti-abortion plank in the national party platform. Otherwise, he predicted, GOP candidates will have a tough time this fall against the Democrats.
The Republican dilemma, however, is more complicated than that. To abandon all mention of abortion, as if the issue did not exist, would make the party look foolish at best and unprincipled at worst. To change principles, to an abortion-rights position like that of the Democratic opposition, would please some in the GOP but offend others who are among the party's most active supporters. After all, should there not be room for issues of conscience in party politics?
Ann Stone, chairman of the Alexandria-based Republicans for Choice, agrees that a no-position position would smell of opportunism. Her group would prefer, she said in reaction to Miller's call, that the party write a new plank with both sides' views taken into account. "I think the two wings can come to common ground," she said.
Common ground on the abortion issue has proved hard to find. Most Americans probably disagree with the proposition that abortion is just another means of birth control or the equivalent of removing a tumor. Most, though, also seem to disagree with the notion that women should be forced to carry pregnancies to term, or that abortion is murder.
There is, even so, a muddled middle that could be found by many Americans, particularly if the debate weren't so dominated by extremists. Surely, everyone can agree there are too many abortions in America, and we need to do more to reduce their number.
If Stone and other Republicans can find principled common ground acceptable to the preponderance of people in both the abortion-rights and anti-abortion camps, they will have accomplished a considerable service for the nation as well as their party.