Giuliani Tries to Clarify Abortion Stance

The distance Giuliani has traveled over his political career is underscored by where he stood as he was beginning his first bid for mayor of New York. The July 4, 1989, edition of the New York Times reported it this way:

"In an interview yesterday, Mr. Giuliani said he was personally opposed to abortion, did not favor government financing for abortion and had believed that the Roe v. Wade decision should be overturned. At the same time, he said he would 'preserve, protect and defend all constitutional and legal rights, including a woman's right of choice,' as long as the state law remained unchanged. But he did not say a woman should have a fundamental right to an abortion."

Today he is in a different place, although one in which his emphasis continues to shift. In an interview in April with The Post, he said, "This is a constitutional right that has to be accepted." At the recent Republican debate, Giuliani said it would be "okay" if the court overturned Roe, but also okay if the court upheld it.

Reiter was an unpaid adviser during the 1989 campaign. She said that Giuliani had never thought about abortion as a public policy issue until he challenged mayoral candidate David Dinkins. Personally opposed to abortion, he did not see it as a mayoral issue and hoped it would not become part of his campaign debate.

That hope ended when the Supreme Court, in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services , ruled that states could begin to consider restrictions on abortion. At that point, with help from Reiter, Jennifer Raab, the campaign's policy director and now president of Hunter College, and his then-wife, Donna Hanover Giuliani, he began to formulate a policy position. He emerged as an unequivocal advocate for abortion rights.

Dinkins called his rival a flip-flopper, but Reiter said: "It wasn't a flip-flop. The man had never taken a public position on abortion."

Giuliani narrowly lost that 1989 race. When he returned for a rematch with Dinkins in 1993, there was no difference in the two candidates' positions. "This was a man who was an absolute friend and ally," said Kelli Conlin, president of the New York state affiliate of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

This week, the New York group made available copies of Giuliani's 1997 NARAL questionnaire, which show just how strongly he endorsed the group's full agenda.

At that time, Giuliani said he supported Medicaid funding for abortions "without any restrictions." At last week's Republican presidential debate in California, when he was asked why he supported public funding for abortions, he replied: "I don't. I support the Hyde Amendment. I hate abortion. I wish people didn't have abortions."

But in June 1993, when Giuliani spoke to more than 800 women and endorsed abortion rights without restrictions, the campaign distributed leaflets saying that he opposed the Hyde Amendment, according to the New York Times.

In yesterday's speech, Giuliani explained that he had early reservations about the Hyde Amendment, but said, "It works, there is no reason to change it." But he said he supported the right of states to provide such funding. Conlin called that position "incongruous."

On the 1997 questionnaire, Giuliani said he opposed legislation that would restrict minors from receiving abortions without first notifying a parent or that would restrict a minor from having an abortion without obtaining permission "from a parent or from a court."