Pressing the Abortion Issue

By Ed Magnusonith

Campaign 84

Ferraro's stand is attacked by bishops, defended by Democrats

Rather than fading, the divisive issue intensified. Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate Geraldine Ferraro found herself under seemingly concerted attack by Roman Catholic bishops for failing to embrace the church's position on abortion. Presidential Candidate Walter Mondale ran into a buzz saw of antiabortion demonstrators in the Deep South and felt compelled to defend his religious beliefs. Despite evidence to the contrary, Vice President George Bush said that he could not recall supporting any type of federal funding for abortion in his primary race against Ronald Reagan four years ago. The President, meanwhile, basked in the presence and lavish praise of a Roman Catholic Cardinal in Pennsylvania.

During the emotional week, two Catholics who are Democratic officeholders, New York Governor Mario Cuomo and Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, sought to cool passions with a well-reasoned defense of their own--and by implication, Ferraro's--refusal to seek laws that would impose Catholic moral positions on all of U.S. society. Cuomo, more restrained than in his stirring Democratic Convention keynote speech but just as articulate, drew a standing ovation from an overflow crowd at the University of Notre Dame after a 53-minute discourse in which he asked a pointed question of his fellow Catholics: "Are we asking government to make criminal what we believe to be sinful because we ourselves can't stop committing the sin?"

The continuing debate over the proper role of religious leaders in trying to influence public policy and the conflicting pressures on elected officials who hold strong religious beliefs distracted Mondale and Ferraro from their planned campaign strategies. The two Democratic running mates were almost unable to focus attention on the many issues they want to employ against Reagan in their long-shot battle to wipe out the President's commanding lead in popular support. The furor sublimated Mondale's long-awaited unveiling of his plan to slash the huge federal deficit by two-thirds within four years (see following story). The only hope for the Democrats in the reli gious controversy was that a backlash might grow against the intrusion of the bishops, as well as Protestant Fundamentalists, into partisan politics.

The assault on Ferraro seemed almost gratuitous. Before addressing a pro-life convention in Altoona, Pa., New York Archbishop John J. O'Connor told reporters that Ferraro had "said some things about abortion relative to Catholic teaching which are not true." He did not immediately explain just what Ferraro had said or when she had said it. Puzzled and privately seething, the candidate tried to reach O'Connor between campaign appearances. She finally did so from Indianapolis. In what she described as a "cordial, direct and helpful" 35-minute telephone conversation, she politely asked the Archbishop what "mischaracterization" of the church position he had in mind. He cited a letter she had sent in 1982 to other Roman Catholic members of the House accompanying some literature from a group called Catholics for a Free Choice. The printed material showed, her letter said, that "the Catholic position on abortion is not monolithic and that there can be a range of personal and political responses to the issue." Barely suppressing her anger, she questioned the timing of O'Connor's announcement. "Why is this letter coming out now of all times?" she asked. Unsatisfied by a vague answer from O'Connor, Ferraro pleaded, "I think that if you make reference to it again, you ought to make it clear you're referring to a 1982 document."

Timing aside, the disagreement between the two was over the meaning of the ambiguous language that the Ferraro letter, which had been drafted by an aide, had used. The Archbishop contended that Ferraro had "misrepresented" the position of the church. "The teaching of the Catholic Church is monolithic on the subject of abortion," he said. Indeed it is (see box). But Ferraro insisted that she was not referring in her letter to the official position of the church, which she agreed "is monolithic." Instead, she was referring to individual Catholics, contending that "there are a lot of Catholics who do not share the view of the Catholic Church."

That, too, is not in dispute. A recent Gallup poll on abortion, taken in the summer of 1982, shows that 64% of U.S. Catholics oppose "a ban on all abortion." That is almost as large as the opposition among all Americans (69%) and all Protestants (70%). Even "evangelical" Protestants, Gallup found, oppose an abortion ban, 58% to 42%.

Ferraro's reception in Scranton, Pa., an area in which roughly one-third of the population is Catholic and the pro-life movement is strong, was far less gentle. Worried about possible violence, Scranton police substituted plainclothes officers for volunteer drivers in the Ferraro motorcade, and a state police helicopter monitored the route. She faced bitter signs at her speech site in a downtown mall. FERRARO--A CATHOLIC JUDAS, read one. I'M GLAD FERRARO WASN'T MY MOTHER, said another, held by a five-year-old boy.

The shouts of the several hundred protesters, however, were overwhelmed by the Ferraro supporters in the crowd of 5,000. The candidate did not duck the religion issue. "For the first time in over 20 years, religion has been injected into a presidential campaign," she told the crowd. "I have not welcomed it, and I do not want it to be an issue in this race. To me, my religion is a very personal and private matter. But when some people try to use religion for their partisan political advantage, then the freedom of us all is at risk." She said that her oath of office requires that she serve "all the people of every faith, not just some people of my own faith ... I cannot, and I will not, seek to impose my own religious views on others."

Within an hour after her speech, Scranton Bishop James Timlin, who had taken over O'Connor's former diocese after O'Connor was installed as Archbishop of New York, held a press conference. He sharply attacked Ferraro's attempt to separate her public duties from her religious views as "absolutely ridiculous." He likened her abortion position to the slavery issue. "You can't say," Timlin argued, " 'I'm personally opposed to slavery, but I don't care if others down the street have them.' " The bishop insisted that he was not telling anyone how to vote, but suggested that the only time he would not favor the pro-life candidate was if he or she were "a babbling idiot."

Mondale, too, faced the boos of antiabortionists in a high school gym in Tupelo, Miss. Outside the school, black youths who favor Mondale and white students from a segregated Baptist academy got into angry shoving matches. Mondale got a helpful introduction from Tupelo Mayor James Caldwell, who said of him, "He doesn't have to talk about his beliefs. He practices them. He doesn't have to talk about prayer in school. He prays at home." But when a questioner described the Democratic platform as "antireligion," Mondale replied, "I have my faith, and it's my whole being. What makes America great is that our faith is between ourselves, our conscience and our God. We don't have to clear our faith by passing muster with some politician who happens to be running against us." On abortion, Mondale declared, "It's a question I've prayed about, and I cannot bring myself to support the amendment that seems to be the test. The use of the state in that matter is the wrong policy." At tunes, the mixture of boos and applause muffled his words.

Visiting Pennsylvania, President Reagan had a different reception. He toured the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa near Doylestown, where he gave a religious tapestry from Poland to the Pauline fathers who care for the Polish-American shrine. Crowds shouted, "Four more years! Four more years!" John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia praised Reagan for supporting federal aid to religious schools. Reagan drew cheers by declaring, "Thank God for Pope John Paul II." The President said that he had sought the Pope's "advice and guidance on numerous occasions."

Vice President Bush, campaigning in South Carolina and Georgia, was dogged by reporters' questions about whether he fully agreed with Reagan that there should be no federal funding for abortions and that a constitutional amendment banning them should be enacted. In Charleston, S.C., Bush said that he not only opposes all public funding for abortion now but that "I always have." In Atlanta, he told reporters, "My position is like Ronald Reagan's. Put that down." Reporters, however, quickly turned up 1980 newspaper clippings and TV footage showing that Bush had supported federal funding for abortions in case of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother, and had opposed an antiabortion amendment. "I don't recall it as being my posi tion then," Bush said about this evidence. Didn't that damage his credibility? "No," he replied. "There's an awful lot of things I don't remember."

Still, the most probing analysis last week of the dilemma facing public officials on religious issues came from Kennedy and Cuomo. Speaking at a New York City meeting of Coalition of Conscience, a Democratic political action group, the Senator argued that on issues such as abortion, school prayer and homosexuality "the proper role of religion is to appeal to the free conscience of each person, not the coercive rule of secular law." He warned that "we cannot be a tolerant country if churches bless some candidates as God's candidates--and brand others as ungodly or immoral." The logical separation between private morality and public policy, he contended, "is the line between the rule of government and the role of individual rights."

Invited by Notre Dame's theology department to give the first in a series of lectures on the effect religious faith has on individual public officials, Cuomo attracted national TV coverage of his South Bend, Ind., speech. He, like Ferraro, had engaged in an earlier public argument with Archbishop O'Connor. Last June the Archbishop had said, "I don't see how a Catholic in good conscience can vote for a candidate who explicitly supports abortion." Cuomo had challenged this as a virtual declaration that Catholics should not vote for any candidate who supported abortion. After a celebrated exchange, O'Connor said he was not telling anyone how to vote, and the Governor conceded that he may have "misunderstood" the Archbishop.

Cuomo's speech at Notre Dame revealed a remarkable pragmatism coexisting with strong religious sensibilities. His central argument was that public policy in a democratic and religiously diverse society can be determined only by consensus. Describing himself as "an old-fashioned Catholic who sins, regrets, struggles, worries, gets confused and most of the time feels better after confession," Cuomo said that he was elected "to serve Jews and Muslims and atheists and Protestants, as well as Catholics." He and other Catholics in public office must "help create conditions under which all can live with a maximum of dignity and with a reasonable degree of freedom; where everyone who chooses may hold beliefs different from specifically Catholic ones." In this freedom, he said, "I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to be a Jew, or a Protestant or a nonbeliever, or anything else you choose." Otherwise, "the price of seeking to force our belief on others is that they might some day force their belief on us."

The Governor said that he respected "the teaching authority of the bishops," including their stand on abortion. But he noted that "on divorce and birth control, without changing its moral teaching, the church abides the civil law as it now stands, thereby accepting--without making much of a point of it--that in our pluralistic society we are not required to insist that all our religious values be the law of the land." Whether and precisely how to turn church teachings into public policy, Cuomo argued, "is not a matter of doctrine; it is a matter of prudential political judgment."

Turning more specifically to abortion, the Governor contended that people who favor legalized abortion "aren't a ruthless, callous alliance of anti-Christians determined to overthrow our moral standards." Among them, he noted, are the American Lutheran Church, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and women of the Episcopal Church and of B'nai B'rith. In view of the widespread opposition to an all-out ban on abortion, Cuomo noted, even the bishops had decided in 1981 that it was futile to seek such a constitutional ban. Instead, they endorsed the Hatch amendment, which would give states the right to decide whether to make abortion illegal within their boundaries. Said Cuomo: "The church in this country has never retreated into a moral fundamentalism that will settle for nothing less than total acceptance of its views."

But if Cuomo is a devout Catholic, why does he not use his office to urge support of the church's drive to end all abortions? The Governor argued that he does not believe that, even if enacted, an abortion ban could be enforced or would achieve the goals that the church seeks. "It would be Prohibition revisited." As for stopping Medicaid funding of abortions, Cuomo claimed that poor women would merely find other ways to obtain abortions, while "the rich and middle classes" would be unaffected. "The hard truth is that abortion is not a failure of government. No agency forces women to have abortions, but abortions go on." Cuomo suggested that before Catholic leaders seek laws prohibiting non-Catholics from having abortions, they must convince their own church members that they should accept the church's teachings on the subject. Said he: "Despite the sermons and pleadings of parents and priests and prelates, we Catholics apparently believe--and perhaps act--little differently from those who don't share our commitment."

At a dinner meeting of Italian-Americans in New York City at week's end, both Ferraro and O'Connor spoke. But guests expecting more verbal fireworks about abortion were disappointed. Neither challenged the other. They patted each other's hands and smiled fleetingly before parting. Yet the emotions stirred by the religious controversy seemed unlikely to subside during the remaining days of the presidential campaign.

--By EdMagnuson. Reported by David Beckwith with Ferraro and Elizabeth Taylor/South Bend

With reporting by David Beckwith, Elizabeth Taylor