WASHINGTON — Faced with the durability of Rudolph W. Giuliani's lead in the Republican presidential race, his rivals are stoking new debate on whether the party should accept a White House nominee who favors abortion rights.
If he prevails, the former New York mayor would be the party's first White House nominee in a generation to support abortion rights during his campaign. But Giuliani has used increasingly nuanced, even tortured, language in recent days to minimize resistance to his candidacy among antiabortion Republicans.
At a debate Thursday, he said he "hates" abortion but also defended his support for taxpayer-funded abortions in New York as a state prerogative.
He also said it would be "OK" for courts to uphold Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that found a right to abortion, and "OK" for a court to overturn it, leaving the issue to the states.
This week, reports surfaced anew that Giuliani had donated $900 during the 1990s to Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading abortion provider. The reports, in turn, led the top campaign strategist for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to suggest Tuesday that Giuliani's position was unacceptable for a Republican standard-bearer.
"He's well outside the mainstream of rank-and-file Republicans on this issue, not only as someone who is pro-abortion, but someone who has supported one of the most radical pro-abortion groups in the country," John Weaver, the McCain strategist, said in a telephone interview.
Weaver's remarks came a day after McCain had said it would be tough for a Republican who favored abortion rights to win the nomination.
"I think it's one of the fundamental principles of a conservative to have respect and commitment to the dignity of human life, both the born and unborn," McCain told the Associated Press in Iowa.
Giuliani's lead in public opinion surveys has raised the question of what it would mean for the party to nominate an abortion-rights supporter.
Asked if he could support such a nominee, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a presidential candidate and steadfast abortion opponent, said in last week's debate: "I could, because I believe in the Ronald Reagan principle that somebody that's with you 80% of the time is not your enemy; that's your friend and that's our ally."
The abortion credentials of potential Republican White House contender Fred Thompson came into question Tuesday when a survey filled out by his 1994 Senate campaign surfaced on the Internet. It said Thompson supported a woman's right to abortion in the first three months of pregnancy.
