GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani is set to make a major policy address on abortion, and many are predicting that he’ll come out as being openly pro-choice.
If that is true, Giuliani may have ended his chances at getting the GOP nomination.
Mayor Giuliani has been walking a fine line, stating that he would nominate strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court and indicating that he would continue the status quo on abortion. Even though he has stated that he does believe in a woman’s right to choose to terminate their pregnancy, he’s always prefaced that by stating that he finds abortion abhorrent.
The simple fact is that the majority of the Republican Party believes that abortion is the killing of a human life and should be outlawed. That is a reasonable, consistent, and moral position and it is one that defines what the Republican Party is about. The lives of the innocent should be protected by law, and life begins at conception. If one believes that life begins at conception, then one simply cannot support abortion as either a moral or a legal matter. It is a barbaric practice often done for reasons which have nothing to do with the life or health of the mother, but for nothing more than sheer convenience. It is barbaric for the law to take away the right for an unborn child to exist — the paramount right of all — for such flimsy reasoning.
Mayor Giuliani is right, as a practical matter, abortion should be an issue for the states. The legal reasoning behind the landmark abortion cases of Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood is based on poor reasoning and judgments that are properly the domain of legislatures and not the courts. The Court’s abortion jurisprudence isn’t just an affront to the lives of the unborn, it’s an affront to logic and consistency as well. If the reasoning in the Roe and Casey line of cases were overruled, the states would be able to make the sort of legislative judgments as to how to treat abortion that the federal system of government should allow them to make.
However, even if Giuliani gets the legal argument right, many Republicans, if not most, will not vote for a man who is pro-abortion. Such a stance is one that is too far out of line from the values and principles of the Republican Party. Giuliani has to respect that matters of faith and of human life are of paramount concern to his party — and while Republicans can and do disagree, the person who represents the GOP to the nation cannot be someone whose personal views are so far removed from the majority.
There are a few issues which define the Republican Party — and abortion is one of them. Mayor Giuliani deserves some credit for being honest and candid with his party, but if he expects to run a campaign that supports the taking of innocent human lives, then he cannot expect to win the Republican nomination.
