TOLERATING INTOLERANCE

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Has Bob Dole even read the current Republican platform provision on abortion? The 1992 platform declares: "We believe the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life that cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the 14th Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

Over the years, almost all the controversy has focused on the constitutional-amendment issue. But neither Dole nor the media have had anything to say regarding that last clause, about the 14th Amendment. It's a bomb.

The 14th Amendment guarantees all citizens "equal protection of the laws." It is the part of the Constitution used to bar state discrimination against blacks, women and so on. What, then, would it mean to guarantee fetuses equal protection of the laws? People who hire professional killers to eliminate their born children are prosecuted for murder. Under equal protection, the same would have to be true of women who hire doctors to eliminate their fetuses. Furthermore, many states execute people who deliberately kill, or arrange for the killing of, innocent human beings. The Republican platform is quite enthusiastic about this practice. But under equal protection, you certainly couldn't have the death penalty for killing a post-birth human being and a lesser punishment--or no punishment at all--for killing a fetus.

All this is not some fanciful constitutional interpretation. It's basic 14th Amendment doctrine. To be sure, most Republican politicians would indignantly--and sincerely--deny that they wish to execute women who procure abortions. But that just illustrates that many of them support the antiabortion platform, not out of heartfelt conviction, but as a pander to an especially ardent interest group. Still, it's their language. Dole and others voted for it in the past, even if they fudge this time around.

In his recent plea for "tolerance" and "civility" in the abortion debate, Dole got tolerance and civility off to a shaky start by accusing the Democrats of "hard-line views" and "extremism." Certainly nothing in the Democratic platform is as hard-line and extreme as the Republican call for executing abortion patients. But Dole wishes to make much of an episode at the 1992 Democratic Convention that has achieved mythic status in the abortion debate.

"I will not silence those who disagree" on abortion, Dole declared. "This has been the practice of the Democratic Party, which excluded one of its most popular leaders, Governor Bob Casey, from its last convention." Casey was not excluded from the convention. He was denied the opportunity to give a pro-life speech. That was stupid. But was it any more "intolerant" than what happened at the Republican Convention? There pro-choice Governor Bill Weld was allowed to give a speech, but pro-choice placards and banners were banned from the convention hall. As comparative examples of efforts to "silence" dissenters, you might call that a wash.