ANALYSIS

'Safe, legal and rare' gets a new definition

Clinton's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban is seen as a brazen slap in the face of Catholic bishops, pro-lifers

By Russell Shaw

[WASHINGTON]

Will President Clinton's April 10 veto of a bill to ban partial-birth abortions cut sharply into his support among Catholics in November or will it have little impact?

Given the fragmented character of Catholic voting patterns - reflecting the fragmented character of the Catholic community - the answer by no means is certain.

One school of thought holds that the veto will cost Clinton dearly among Catholic voters. That may be. But it also may be that any Catholic votes the veto directly and immediately will "cost" Clinton are, in fact, those he wouldn't have gotten anyway.

If so, the real question is how - or whether - the president's abortion policy, dramatized in the veto but operative from the start of his administration, will affect Catholics who up to now have been less than committed on the issue. These are the true Catholic swing voters, whose support in November is up for grabs.

Despite the uncertainties, some things now are clear. One, Clinton irrevocably has lost any faint chance he might have had of winning favor among Catholics who consider abortion the emblematic evil in what Pope John Paul II calls the "culture of death."

Practically speaking, that happened nine days before the veto. Then, Cardinals James Hickey of Washington and Bernard Law of Boston, four bishops, a scattering of priests and Religious, and several hundred lay people braved a cold and steady downpour to demonstrate peacefully in front of the White House, asking the president to sign the partial-birth abortion ban.

Few imagined he would. But for many of those demonstrating, that wasn't the point of the exercise. It was, instead, to tell the world that Clinton was stepping once and for all over a line: veto the bill, and he could forget about a certain segment of the Catholic vote.

Catholic reaction to the veto underlined that. "He is simply too beholden to his most extreme pro­abortion supporters," said Virgil Dechant, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus.

Cardinals Hickey and Joseph Bernardin of Chicago hinted retribution at the polls. Even liberal Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory, a Catholic who has written glowingly about Clinton, said that on election day Catholics "might not get out of bed for someone who has let them down so hard."

Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, the all but certain Republican presidential nominee, sought to drive home the point in a letter to the president of the U.S. Catholic Conference, Bishop Anthony Pilla of Cleveland. Dole wrote: "If we're going to give living children in the process of birth the legal protection they deserve, we will need a president who does not accept the abortion-on-demand agenda."

Executive disdain

Riding high in the opinion polls, President Clinton made it clear by the timing and manner of his veto that he isn't worried about November. Instead of burying it, he turned the veto into a media event featuring five women - identified and flown to Washington by pro­abortion groups at the White House's request - who said they had partial­birth abortions for medical reasons.

In choosing to make a splash, the president was making a pitch for the women's vote. But he also was advertising disdain for pro-lifers, and the fact that he shares the view attributed by columnist Robert Novak to his political advisers: "They don't believe pro­Clinton Catholics will change their votes in reaction to this veto."

Recent Catholic voting patterns give the president no compelling reason to think the veto will hurt with all Catholics. In 1992, when Catholics were 27 percent of the electorate, 44 percent voted for Clinton, 36 percent for George Bush and 20 percent for Ross Perot. That is, the two "pro­choice" candidates got two­thirds of the Catholic vote, while Bush, the pro-life candidate, received only a little more than a third.

Currently, Clinton is well ahead of Dole in opinion polls among Catholics as among most groups, though it is probably too soon to draw firm conclusions from that.

Polls similarly indicate that Catholic views on abortion are far from monolithic. A Tarrance Group survey for the U.S. bishops last November found that among Catholics who attend Mass weekly, 67 percent opposed legal abortion in all or most cases. But the figure fell to 40 percent among those who attend Mass irregularly.

For all Catholics, the figures were 56 percent opposed to legal abortion in all cases or most, and 43 percent in favor. From a pro-life perspective, these numbers are scarcely better than those for all voters: 52 percent opposed, 43 percent in favor.

Whatever Catholic voters do in November, there is no doubt it will have a major bearing on the election. Catholics comprise a key segment of the electorate in politically critical states like Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Likewise essential to Clinton's calculations are two groups with a significant Catholic component: women and union members.

The president currently is far ahead of Dole among women - 52 percent to 34 percent in one recent poll (men were evenly divided). Even though the administration sees its "pro­choice" stance as appealing to women, polls for years have regularly found women more opposed to abortion than men.

How these tensions play out in the case of Catholic women in November could have a major impact on the election's outcome.

As for unions, the American labor movement today is by no means as heavily Catholic as it was a half century ago. And even many union members, including Catholics, have moved toward the Republicans in recent decades and become "Reagan Democrats."

Now, though, under a politically activist new leadership, the AFL­CIO says it will pour millions of dollars and an army of volunteers into the effort to re­elect Clinton. And what about abortion? AFL­CIO president John Sweeney, a Catholic, is said to be personally opposed, but has generally avoided tipping his hand in public.

Another result of Clinton's veto will almost certainly be an end to any tendency on the U.S. bishops' part to lean toward him. Many people felt the bishops did so at their general meeting last November, when their reservations over GOP welfare proposals moved them to make episcopal pronouncements that some thought aligned the bishops with the president.

But the only possible reading of recent events is that Clinton has given the American hierarchy the back of his hand on abortion.

As a result, no one expects to see bishops out campaigning for Dole. But they are hardly likely to do Clinton any more favors either. Still, the bishops continue to promote their quadrennial "Political Responsibility" statement which, listing issues alphabetically without assigning priorities, lends unwitting support to the notion of moral equivalency among them.

What all this will mean for the Catholic vote in November is anybody's guess. The dismay expressed since Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., included Planned Parenthood on a list of groups to which Catholics can't belong under pain of excommunication shows how far the U.S. Church has come since the days when everyone knew Catholics didn't have the option of supporting abortion. Bill Clinton is the gainer from that.

Shaw is Our Sunday Visitor's Washington correspondent and director of public relations for the Knights of Columbus

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