Bush:
Keep The Pro-Life Platform Plank

By Carol Tobias
NRL PAC Director

As it does every four years, the major media is again attempting to start a fight within the Republican Party over abortion. With equal fervor, pro-lifers are making sure this media-generated fuss will not result in changes in the party's staunchly pro-life platform plank.

Certainly, pro-abortion groups such as "Republicans for Choice" are doing their best to take advantage of a sympathetic press eager for a battle within the the party. However, this year, both the media and abortion supporters are running into a brick wall, and that wall is pro-life Texas Governor George W. Bush, the likely Republican presidential nominee.

Bush has made it very clear that he opposes any weakening of the pro-life plank in the party's platform. Stating that the pro-life plank is the "basis of the Republican Party," Bush has been strong and consistent in his support of the pro-life position.

As further evidence of his determination to maintain the pro- life plank intact, Bush appointed fellow pro-life Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin as chairman of the Platform Committee. Co- chairing the committee will be pro-life Senator Bill Frist (Tennessee) and pro-life Congresswoman Sue Myrick (North Carolina).

In his role as chairman, Gov. Thompson recently met with leaders from pro-abortion organizations to discuss the platform. After the meeting, one attendee told reporters that Thompson "made it very clear there's no indication that the platform is going to change." Thompson spokesperson Kevin Keane told the New York Times that Thompson had "gotten clear direction from the RNC [Republican National Committee] that the plank is going to stay the same."

The Republican Platform Committee will meet prior to the Republican convention. The convention will be held in Philadelphia July 31 - August 3.

The national Democratic convention will take place in Los Angeles August 14-17. Its platform supports unrestricted abortion on demand and tax funding of abortion.

Pro-abortion Vice President Al Gore, the presumptive Democratic nominee, not only holds that same position, but has been a major player in the Clinton-Gore Administration's effort to make abortion an international "human right." (See story, page 5.)

Although there are many, pro-life Democrats, little attention is given to their existence (see editorial, page two). To acknowledge that there are Democrats who do not subscribe to the national party's total embrace of taxpayer-funded abortion on demand would not serve the agenda of many news media outlets: undermining the GOP's 20-year commitment to ending Roe v. Wade.

(Editor's note. See the story on page 7, which quotes from Gov. Bush's remarks to the Catholic Press Association.)