c.2004 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ With significant shares of both Republicans and Democrats disagreeing with their parties’ stands on abortion, President Bush and his challenger, John F. Kerry, are soft-pedaling the issue where national audiences are concerned.

Neither candidate has aired a national television ad on the subject. And neither seems troubled that same sex-marriage has pushed aside abortion as a priority in the 2004 election debate.

In May, when the Gallup Poll asked whether respondents considered themselves “pro-choice” or “pro-life,” 35 percent of Republicans said they were pro-choice and 37 percent of Democrats said they were pro-life.

And in May, pollster Linda DiVall, in a survey conducted for an abortion rights group, Republican Majority for Choice, asked this: “Regardless of how you personally feel about the issue of abortion, do you believe a woman, her family and her doctor should make the decision regarding whether to have an abortion, or should the government make the decision?”

Among Republicans, 73 percent said the woman, 13 percent said the government, and the rest had other opinions. Among Democrats, 90 percent said the woman, 6 percent said the government, and the rest had other opinions.

These schisms make it awkward for either Bush or Kerry to raise full-throated outcries on abortion.

“It’s hard to make it a national campaign issue because such a large bloc in each party disagrees with their party’s position,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “That’s why they don’t talk about it a lot.”

Still, leaders in both major parties are quietly moving to reinforce their traditional platforms. The contradictory planks are expected to be approved without debate at the upcoming national conventions.

And if the candidates have muted their abortion rhetoric on the national stage, both campaigns are exploiting the issue more narrowly in direct mail messages and fund-raising appeals to carefully targeted segments who agree with the party positions. Strategists say this is an effective tactic among single-issue voters who feel most intensely about abortion. And among these voters, feelings can run high.

GOP National Convention delegate Jennifer Blei Stockman worries that her abortion rights activities put her personally at risk, and asked that her Connecticut town not be identified in news stories.

“It’s a little controversial, what I do,” Stockman said. “You have these right-wingers threatening.”

What she does is lead the Republican Majority for Choice, a dissident group seeking to persuade Republican leaders to moderate the party platform’s no-compromise stand against all abortions under any circumstance. Ideally, Stockman said, the abortion plank should be removed from the party platform.

“We believe abortion is a personal decision and does not belong in politics,” she said. “At present, our platform basically says all abortions should be illegal, even in the case of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, and that’s an alienating position for anyone who believes in anything different. The party should be more tolerant.”

The same kind of complaint comes from Democrat Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life for America, who said anti-abortion Democrats are sometimes ostracized from the party, discouraged from seeking office and denied speaking roles at events.

“Pro-life Democrats are sort of a silent majority right now,” Day said. “A lot are afraid to speak out, and that’s unfortunate.”

Day’s group has planned a rally outside the Democrats’ convention hall in Boston on July 27 and a dinner for supporters a day earlier. Stockman’s group plans a rally during the Republican convention in August in New York City.

Gary Bauer, president of the conservative think tank American Values, said the division within Republican ranks on abortion does not threaten Bush’s re-election. In his view, Republicans in favor of abortion rights “tend to be from the upper-income segments of the party, and generally they will vote Republican in their own economic interest and not allow abortion to become a distraction for them.”

Democrat Kerry, meanwhile, is squirming, Bauer said, because his stand in favor of abortion rights hurts him with Catholics and anti-abortion Democratic voters he needs this November. “We see him trying to fine-tune his position, saying he thinks life begins at conception but he isn’t going to attempt to force that view on everybody else through law.”

Bush, too is vulnerable, insists Ann Lewis, chair of the Democratic Party’s Women’s Vote Center and a member of the platform committee.

“What is striking is the way he is disguising his position by saying it’s about violence against women,” Lewis said, referring to Republican efforts to make the murder of a pregnant woman and the consequent death of her fetus two separate capital crimes under the law.

“That tells me they know what we know: that the Republican abortion position is not popular with the majority of Americans and particularly with swing voters. Bush’s position is eventually to make it illegal and meanwhile as difficult, unpleasant and hard to achieve as possible, and put every possible obstacle in the way of a woman’s right to choose on the way to banning it entirely.”

Lewis said the new Democratic platform will say that abortion “should be safe, legal and rare and we stand up proudly for women’s right to choose.”

At the same time, she said, the platform will acknowledge that many members of the party have “deeply held and different views on some matters of conscience and faith” and that Democrats view the diversity of views as a source of strength.

November’s victor will be in position to choose at least one new Supreme Court justice during his four-year term _ possessing the power to extend the status quo on a major cultural fault line or trigger a political earthquake.

“That’s the hook that convinces people that it makes a difference who is elected president,” said Charlie Black, former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

DEA END BENSON