Giuliani Supports Abortion Rights but Will Conservatives Support Him?

May 10, 2007— -- Over the past 20 years, a prerequisite for winning the Republican presidential nomination has been for a candidate to proudly highlight that he is against abortion rights. The candidacy of Rudy Giuliani will test that rule.

During the course of the past two weeks, the debate over abortion and how Giuliani confronts the controversial social issue has been of great debate within political circles and the national media.

The Abortion Storm

The discourse began to garner national attention when during the Republican debate at the Reagan Presidential Library in California, the former New York City mayor gave a nonchalant response to a question about overturning the landmark Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade.

Debate moderator Chris Matthews asked all 10 contenders present, "Will the day that Roe v. Wade is repealed be a good day for America?"

All the candidates on stage responded overwhelmingly in the affirmative, while Giuliani responded, "It'd be OK."

"It would be OK to repeal it," he quickly added. "It would be OK also if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as precedent, and I think a judge has to make that decision…. The court has to make that decision, and then the country can deal with it."

This was not the customary answer from a Republican front-runner.

Another revelation on this subject emerged this week when an opposing campaign, which asked not to be identified, released documents to the media showing that in the late '90s and in the year 2000, Giuliani and then-wife Donna Hanover donated $900 to Planned Parenthood.

A nonprofit organization, Planned Parenthood is a sexual and reproductive health care advocate and provider.

Part of its mission is to ensure that women have the right to choose when or whether to have a child, and if they decide to have a child that they know all their options, including abortion and adoption.

Responding to the Storm

Defending his Planned Parenthood donations on the Laura Ingraham radio program, Giuliani said he donated to the group because it "makes information available, and it's consistent with my position."

The campaign maintains that Giuliani has not changed his position on abortion and although he personally abhors abortion, he believes a woman has the right to make her own decision about it.

While Giuliani was perceived to have stumbled in his response to the question of abortion at the Reagan Library debate, he has no plans of shying away from his pro-abortion rights position.

In Alabama Wednesday, he talked about being a supporter of abortion rights, saying, "Ultimately, I have to respect the fact that other people disagree with that, people who are just as conscientious, just as religious, maybe more, than I am."

On the stump, the former mayor often relays the following advice his father gave him shortly before he died in 1981.

"Courage is being afraid but then doing what you have to do anyway," Harold Giuliani reportedly told his son; a mantra Rudy Giuliani said he has tried to instill in his life and work.

While a pro-abortion rights candidate is not conventionally what Republicans are supposed be, Giuliani has no intention of shying away from his beliefs.

Can Pro-Abortion Rights Republican Win Nomination

According to ABC News polling director Gary Langer, while abortion puts Giuliani in a precarious political situation, it may be a less shaky one than conventional wisdom suggests.

"In an ABC News/Washington Post poll earlier this year, 23 percent of Republicans said there's no chance they could vote for Giuliani given his past support for legal abortion and gay civil unions. But that means 77 percent are still available to him," said Langer.

Rudy Giuliani's high favorability numbers could also help boost the numbers of Republican moderates who come out in support of him and diminish the impact evangelical Protestants and other social conservatives would have against his candidacy.

Giuliani's Strategy

In the days and weeks ahead, pundits and voters will be watching closely as to how Rudy Giuliani deals with this often contentious topic.

Among the immediate challenges ahead of him is his appearance Friday at Houston Baptist University, and an appearance on Fox News Sunday this weekend -- his first Sunday talk show on Fox News Sunday since he announced his campaign in earnest.

Then Giuliani and the Republican pack head south for Tuesday's debate in South Carolina, where he hopes to handle the abortion question better than he had in California.

The Giuliani campaign is fully aware of the challenges they are going to face in small states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, specifically when it comes to abortion. But they plan on being very aggressive in those states and believe they can have still have a strong showing in those and other more conservative-leaning states.

To Giuliani's advantage is the fact that so many large states are in play earlier.

With large moderate states like California, New York and New Jersey in play on "Super Duper Tuesday," the abortion issue can become less of a distraction as a result of the more moderate Republican voters in those states.

The layout of the new primary and caucus calendar could allow for Giuliani to break the conventional wisdom that a pro- abortion rights Republican cannot be their party's nominee.