DUCKING THE QUESTION

By MARGARET CARLSON

Deep inside each consensus-building, big-tent Republican running for President lies the awful knowledge that one false step into the swamp of abortion politics can drown you. Say anything but that you are pro-life in the primaries and you will lose the nomination, but scare the pro-choicers and you may lose the election. So what's a candidate to do? Robert Dole, Phil Gramm and Lamar Alexander all claim the pro-life label, but not the mantle. They wrinkle their noses, say they personally don't like abortion-as if a personal preference substitutes for a clear-cut public policy. Dole and Gramm wriggle out of answering the key questions: Would you support a human-life amendment to the Constitution? And would you seek to overturn Roe v. Wade by appointing Supreme Court Justices pledged to do so?

Alexander's position contains so much doublespeak, one suspects that flannel shirt is intended to obscure not just his Washington-insider status but also his pro-choice heart. Not liking abortion is his claim to being pro-life; his stance looks more pro-choice: "I would try to keep the Federal Government entirely out of abortion: no subsidy-no encouragement, no prohibition." He favors neither enacting a human-life amendment nor overturning Roe. He would send abortion back to the states, although states cannot stop abortions, only impose waiting periods and parental notification.

Gramm has become increasingly hazy about his position. Many who know him believe that Gramm is a libertarian conservative who wants the government off people's backs and out of their bedrooms. Therefore he is opposed to spending federal funds on abortion. But then it gets murky. Last month he said he would not use a litmus test for choosing Supreme Court Justices based on whether they would overturn Roe. He was quoted in the Boston Herald as saying, "One of the things we have to do is learn to live with the fact that there are differences of opinion on this issue." Gramm supported a human-life amendment in the past,when there was no hope of passing it. Now that there might be, Gramm would not tell TIME whether he still backs it.

Dole is vaguest of all. When told by TIME that he was being identified that way, he still would not be any more specific than he was in an earlier interview. "We need to try to bring people together," he says. "Abortion is not the only issue . I don't believe it will divide us."

But it is divisive, which is why the candidates are fudging and hoping to remove the human-life plank from the platform. Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, a proponent of a stealth strategy whereby state and local candidates obscure their social agenda until after they get elected, had been keeping his troops in line on abortion until the nomination of Dr. Henry Foster brought it to center stage. Reed then announced that the coalition would not support a pro-choice candidate, but he pressed no further. "Some would like us to begin the debate today," he says. "But we're not going to let them drag us into a fight."

Many pro-lifers hold not simply a position but rather a belief that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder. Many people disagree, but it is nonnegotiable for those who concur. Perhaps the candidates can wink at pro-lifers and say, "Trust me, I'll ban abortion once I win," and wink the other eye at pro-choicers and say, "Don't worry, I just need their votes." This means, of course, that at times both eyes are closed.