6.27.00
On Abortion, Who's the Extremist?

6.27.00
Genome Breakthrough

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The British Are Crying, the British Are Crying

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Al Gore's Groundhog Day

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Dogs Fighting under a Carpet

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Life on Mars?

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Buckeye Gas Pains

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The Guilty Are Being Executed

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PETA Puts Rats First & People Last

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How the Religious Right Sank Lincoln

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A Supreme Corruption Buster

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Gas Pains II

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Nader Inc.

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The Once and Future King?

6.21.00
Never Mind the Riots

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Gore's Plan Is ADud

6.20.00
The Pablum Platform

6.20.00
High Noon for Vouchers

6.20.00
Elephant Mania!

6.20.00
A Bronx Cheer for Football Player

6/27/00 12:20 p.m.
On Abortion, Who's the Extremist?
The Hillary-Lazio race heats up.

By Jaime Sneider, editorial page editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator

illary Clinton and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) have assailed Rick Lazio for his moderate stance on abortion. While Lazio disapproves of partial-birth abortion, he supports the right of a woman to have an abortion before fetal viability. Of course, any deviation from a universal right to abortion on demand wins the rebuke of the left.

Never mind that Lazio's views coincide with those of most Americans. NARAL has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, saying, "Rick Lazio's record clearly demonstrates that he is anything but pro-choice."

The President of NARAL, Kate Michelman, claims in her rambling diatribe that "Hillary Clinton has a life-long commitment to the rights of women, and the health and well being of their families. She has demonstrated that commitment over and over." Mrs. Clinton maintains on her web site that "I have consistently worked to increase access to health care, including reproductive health care such as family planning and abortions, at every income level, and to build and maintain support for international family planning." But despite the claims of both NARAL and Mrs. Clinton herself, each fails to provide a single example of any achievement in this area. Given the fact that Mrs. Clinton's career as a politician is limited to being the wife of an impeached president, her record of achievement in bolstering women's rights consists basically of issuing pledges. She declares: "You know where I stand — you will always be able to trust me to protect a woman's right to choose."

According to NARAL, while New Yorkers ought to trust Clinton blindly, Lazio's record exhibits "anti-choice" sentiment, which renders him incapable of adequately serving the public. They assert that of the 94 votes he cast on these issues in the U.S. House of Representatives, "43 were anti-choice votes." His many violations of the rigid pro-abortion orthodoxy include his vote criminalizing persons who take minors across state lines for the purpose of undergoing an abortion if they have not complied with their own state's parental consent laws. Evidently, when Mrs. Clinton and NARAL refer to "the universal right to choose," they truly believe this entitles persons other than a child's parents to see to it that their daughter has an abortion. (Remember that it takes a village, not a parent, to raise a child.)

And what exactly does NARAL mean when it says, "[Lazio] voted to deny abortion services to poor women"? This doesn't mean that Lazio has at any time voted to prevent women of certain economic classes from obtaining abortions. All it says is that Lazio has voted against proposals to subsidize abortion with federal tax dollars — and that this is an unacceptable heresy against the pro-choice orthodoxy.

NARAL considers Lazio's stance against the federal government paying for abortion essentially "anti-choice." For that matter, so does Mrs. Clinton, who ran attack ads featuring Ed Koch saying that Lazio "isn't really pro-choice," for this same reason. But this is reasonable? In my view, no. I think abortion advocates who believe the right to choose constitutes an entitlement to federal money are analogous to Second Amendment supporters who believe the government ought to arm persons on demand, or First Amendment activists who favor Federally-financed printing presses. So is Lazio's position fanatical? The Center for Gender Equity, by no means a conservative group, conducted a poll that found 53% of American women believe abortion should be permitted only to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape and incest. Even more revealing, 70% of those polled said that they believed further restrictions on abortion are warranted, specifically with regard to partial-birth abortion.

Despite NARAL's opposition, Lazio voted for a federal ban of partial-birth abortion; although the bill passed, Mrs. Clinton's husband vetoed it. In setting out to characterize Lazio's position on abortion as radical, Clinton and NARAL have only fortified their place as extremists, out of touch with the American people.

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