The Abortion Issue

Abortion is fast becoming one of the most volatile issues in U.S. politics. While it singed George McGovern in the Nebraska primary last week, it exploded in New York, involving the President of the U.S., Governor Nelson Rockefeller, anxious state legislators up for re-election and a prince of the Roman Catholic Church.

The spark was a move in the Albany legislature to repeal the state's two-year-old liberalized abortion law. One of the broadest in the U.S., it permits legal abortions by doctors on women in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy; there have been 350,000 legal abortions in New York City alone under the law. For more than a year, opponents—including Catholic-dominated Right to Life groups, some Protestants and Orthodox Jews—have been buttonholing legislators, conducting letter-writing campaigns and otherwise mustering support for the repeal bill. With the backing of Terence Cardinal Cooke, Archbishop of New York, abortion was condemned from pulpits throughout the archdiocese. As debate on the repeal bill neared, busloads of antiabortionists arrived in Albany to demonstrate outside the Capitol. Some carried signs; others made speeches equating abortion with infanticide and upholding the right of the fetus to life. Some of the tactics went even further. State Senator Sidney von Luther, a black from Manhattan who supports the liberalized law, complained of middle-of-the-night telephone calls that "frightened my wife because the callers questioned her morality."

Enter the President. The White House is keenly aware that mail has recently been running 5 to 1 against the pro-abortion recommendations of the President's panel on population control chaired by Nelson Rockefeller's elder brother John. Public-opinion polls have shown that abortion is still unacceptable to large numbers of Americans. Nixon Speechwriter Patrick Buchanan, seeing the New York debate as an opportunity for the President to put his anti-abortion views on record once more to political advantage, suggested that he do so in a letter to Cardinal Cooke. Nixon agreed, intervening boldly in the kind of state-legislative uproar he usually avoids. The letter, endorsing the repeal movement and calling it a "noble endeavor," was released by the Cardinal's office—with tacit, if not explicit, White House approval.

The President's letter surprised Cardinal Cooke and embarrassed Rockefeller, who had backed a substitute bill permitting abortions up to 16 weeks after conception. The fury of pro-abortion forces ripped through Republican suburban strongholds and cut across party lines. In an effort to repair the damage, Presidential Assistant John Ehrlichman lamely explained that the unsolicited letter was meant to be private and had been released only because of "sloppy staff work." Few were convinced.