The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

DOES GEORGE BUSH BELIEVE IN ANYTHING SO DEEPLY that he would rather lose the election than abandon that principle? To hear the President before the Knights of Columbus on Aug. 5, his opposition to abortion passes the test: "I promise you again today, no matter the political price -- and they tell me in this year that it's enormous -- I am going . . .to stand on my conscience when it comes to matters of life." Since then, and despite the Republican Party's screaming pro-life affirmation of Bush's public stance, the keepers of the faith have winked and nodded. Hear them today, and their every statement is a nuanced embrace of reason, each a seemingly heartfelt echo of Bush at his Inaugural: "I yearn for a greater tolerance and easygoingness about each other's attitudes and way of life." Hear the President say he would support his granddaughter's hypothetical decision to terminate her pregnancy, and his matter-of-fact insistence that the decision to do so would be hers alone ("Who else's could it be?"). Hear Dan Quayle say the same, and the First Lady call abortion a "personal choice," and the G.O.P. national chairman describe his party as a "big tent," immense enough to accommodate even those who favor abortion at will.

A mass conversion? Hardly. The President faces a gender gap of unprecedented proportions (in most surveys, women favor Bill Clinton by almost 20 points), a black hole attributable almost entirely to Bush's implacable hostility to choice and the widespread perception that the Supreme Court is only one Justice away from overturning Roe v. Wade, which constitutionally protects a woman's right to abortion. Now, at the worst possible time, the President has again vetoed Congress's repeal of the regulation that prohibits abortion counseling at 4,000 federally funded family-planning clinics that serve the $ poor -- a ban the Administration says it will begin enforcing on Oct. 1. Combined with the gutting of other sex-education and family-planning programs, the President's action closes the circle: Don't tell people how they get pregnant; and when they do, don't tell them how to get unpregnant.

While the various aspects of the policy mesh, they have created an acute political dilemma; hence the fog of soothing rhetoric, an elaborate damage- control operation designed to portray the President as a compassionate moralist saddened by the regrettable course so many misguided souls choose. Don't be fooled. Through presidential vetoes, ideological appointments, Justice Department actions, executive orders and public advocacy, the Bush Administration has implemented antiabortion policies that are even more restrictive than Ronald Reagan's. Consider the record:

-- It is now the rule that federal funds may not be used for abortions unless the mother's life is in danger; that employers are no longer obliged to pay for health-insurance benefits for abortions (unless the mother's life is threatened); that legal-aid lawyers are prohibited from providing legal assistance for nontherapeutic abortions; and that private organizations lose federal funds if they engage in abortion-related activities abroad, even when those activities are paid for by non-American sources.

-- Bush is enforcing the policy that prohibits women in the armed forces from obtaining abortions at overseas military facilities -- even when they use their own money to pay for the procedures -- despite the Defense Department's acknowledgment that "quality medical care may not be locally available."

-- On three separate occasions, Bush has vetoed bills that would have allowed the District of Columbia to use local tax dollars to pay for the abortions of poor women -- which even the Reagan Administration had permitted until 1988.

-- Despite his repeated denials of using a litmus test to choose officials, all the President's top health appointees are pro-life advocates. Among the casualties of Bush's de facto policy is the White House physician, Burton Lee, whose pro-choice views killed his chances of becoming Surgeon General.

Bush's health officials have systematically stymied abortion-related research, including that designed specifically to foster "traditional" life- styles. The President's minions have twice torpedoed so-called "sex surveys" considered vital to planning the government's response to the AIDS crisis because they included questions about contraception and sexual behavior. In 1990 an interagency task force proposed funding school-based clinics "in high-poverty areas with high rates of out-of-wedlock births." A White House official acknowledged that such a program could reduce teen pregnancy and the number of single-parent families, but the Administration feared being seen as "encouraging promiscuity" and worried that the plan could "cause political problems among groups that are opposed to birth control." At the same time, total public funding for contraceptive devices has declined by one-third over the past decade; after a steady decrease in the 1970s, unintended childbearing in the U.S. is again on the rise.

As the President softens his tone for political gain, keep in mind the classic advice of Richard Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell: "Watch what we do, not what we say." Do that, and the two words one would never use to describe Bush's actions in the area of reproductive freedom are kind and gentle.