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WHERE DOES ELIZABETH DOLE REALLY STAND ON ABORTION? | PAGE 1, 2, 3
One has to wonder how, and why, Dole was able to keep her abortion views mum for so long. "Whether someone was pro-life or pro-choice wasn't an issue until the end of the Reagan years," insists Wendy Borcherdt, a Los Angeles Republican political consultant and former Dole aide. "Reagan's primary concerns were economics, military and foreign policy. We didn't deal with a lot of social issues. Everyone knew Reagan and the party's position on abortion. If there was anything we were pressured on, it was how many women were in government and appointed to positions of responsibility." In fact, abortion was a vital issue during the Reagan-Bush years, when the burgeoning anti-abortion movement had the ear of the president and conservative legislators. Steady attacks on abortion rights started with the so-called Hyde Amendment, first introduced by Henry Hyde, R-Ill., in 1977 and renewed each subsequent year after Reagan's election, which banned the use of federal Medicaid money to pay for abortions for poor women. Congress also passed a bill banning the use of government health insurance to pay for federal employee abortions in 1983. The same year, the Senate considered a bill that would have imposed a constitutional ban on abortion (it was narrowly defeated). Throughout his presidency, Reagan used an anti-abortion litmus test for selecting judicial nominees. Bush, who wavered slightly on his abortion stance (he told the Washington Post he didn't support a constitutional ban in 1980) and made a few abortion-related missteps early in his term, later applied the same test for nominees. It was during the Bush administration, when a conservative majority in the Supreme Court had finally been reached, that Roe vs. Wade got its first serious high-court challenge. The resulting majority decision in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services trimmed abortion rights. Given this context, it's amazing that Dole was given a pass on the topic. Carolyn Mulford, who wrote a biography of Dole for young adults, says she didn't even raise the abortion question while interviewing Dole earlier this decade because she had been so evasive in the press clippings Mulford had read. "She said the same thing again and again, so when I interviewed her, I didn't ask her about it because I thought I would get the same reply." But in 1996, a reporter asked Mulford why Dole had been evasive. "My interpretation was that she simply didn't want to give her views and probably didn't want to give them because they differed slightly from Bob's. I'm assuming that she was slightly more liberal than he was on the issue." When that interpretation appeared in an article, "I got a call from Elizabeth's office," Mulford recalls, "and they said she had been avoiding the question." People who knew or worked with Dole in the early '80s say that she was always quiet about abortion because it wasn't an area of policy that affected her work at the departments of Transportation and Labor. "Elizabeth is pro-life, but she hasn't held political positions where it was necessary for her to address the issue," says her nephew, John Hanford, a minister. "I know that she did come out and support Bob on this issue during his campaign." Hanford also said that abortion is "not an issue that she discusses with her family," and he wouldn't speculate whether Dole would make judicial appointments or support legislation that would result in the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. But others have. Her pollster, Linda DiVall, told the New York Times, "I don't know that she wants to overturn the law of the land." DiVall would not elaborate for Salon. "I really don't have anything further to say on that. Mrs. Dole, I'm sure, will unveil her position, and I'm going to wait for that." In the current issue of Newsweek, the first clues emerged that Dole may no longer support the 1996 Republican platform plank that sought a constitutional ban on all abortions. Unnamed Dole advisors told the newsweekly that when she finally does address abortion, she will likely state that she's "personally pro-life," and would support legislation to reduce the "incidences" of abortion. One advisor told Newsweek that Dole "knows what she wants to say, but just isn't eager to say it." N E X T+P A G E+| A "civil war" over abortion |
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