Uproar over Abortion

In many parts of the nation, an uproar is rising that is making an old question this year's newest election issue: abortion. The Right to Life forces have picked it up with fresh fervor, threatening to withhold their votes from any candidate who does not call for making almost all abortions illegal.

In New Hampshire, where 75% of Democrats who vote in primaries are Catholic, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a Democratic contender, is peppered with the question time and again. Though he personally opposes abortion, he supports the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing it--but some critics claim he had been ambiguous before the Iowa precinct caucuses (see PRESS). On the stump, Indiana's Birch Bayh is plagued by anti-abortion demonstrators who decry his leadership last year in the Senate against a constitutional amendment that would have outlawed most abortions. Sargent Shriver does not favor overturning the Supreme Court decision, but proposes setting up "life-support" centers to counsel women seeking abortions on whether or not to really have the operation. Ellen McCormack, 49, a housewife from Merrick, N.Y., is running hard in the Democratic primary in the state--as well as in Massachusetts--representing the anti-abortion Right to Life movement. Her support is broad enough nationally that last week she qualified as the eleventh Democrat to collect federal matching funds.

Too Far. Among the Republicans.

Ronald Reagan has come out flatly against abortion on demand and in favor of the constitutional amendment outlawing abortion except in rare cases posing a clear risk to the woman's life.

In response to growing pressures for his own views, President Ford last week told Walter Cronkite in a CBS-TV interview that the Supreme Court "went too far" in striking down state laws against abortion. Instead, Ford offered "a moderate position," opposing abortion on demand but recognizing that there were cases, including rape and illness, when "abortion should be permitted." He advocated a constitutional amendment that would allow each state to decide whether or not it would allow abortions.

Ford's waffling statement angered all sides. Many critics noted that under his plan, an affluent woman from a state that outlawed abortion could travel to a state that permitted it, but a poor woman would scarcely have that choice. The anti-abortion March for Life termed Ford's position "useless"; the pro-abortion National Women's Political Caucus called it "clearly regressive." Once again Betty Ford chided her roommate. She reaffirmed her support of the Supreme Court's decision, which took the issue "out of the backwoods and put [it] in the hospital where it belongs."

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