History > 2007 > USA > Women (II)

JSC2003-E-34617 (11 April 2003) --

 Astronaut Pamela A. Melroy, commander

STS-120 Preflight Gallery        NASA

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/193278main_jsc2003e34617_hires.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts120/multimedia/preflight/index.html

A Giant Leap for Womankind

October 20, 2007
Filed at 2:53 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A giant leap is about to be made for womankind.

When space shuttle Discovery blasts off Tuesday, a woman will be sitting in the commander's seat. And up at the international space station, a female skipper will be waiting to greet her.

It will be the first time in the 50-year history of spaceflight that two women are in charge of two spacecraft at the same time.

This is no public relations gimmick cooked up by NASA. It's coincidence, which pleases shuttle commander Pamela Melroy and station commander Peggy Whitson.

''To me, that's one of the best parts about it,'' said Melroy, a retired Air Force colonel who will be only the second woman to command a space shuttle flight. ''This is not something that was planned or orchestrated in any way.''

Indeed, Melroy's two-week space station construction mission was originally supposed to be done before Whitson's six-month expedition.

''This is a really special event for us,'' Melroy said. ''... There are enough women in the program that coincidentally this can happen, and that is a wonderful thing. It says a lot about the first 50 years of spaceflight that this is where we're at.''

Whitson -- the first woman to be in charge of a space station -- arrived at the orbital outpost on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Oct. 12. She flew there with two men, one a Russian cosmonaut who will spend the entire six months with her.

Before the launch, an official presented her with a traditional Kazakh whip to take with her. It's a symbol of power, Whitson explained, because of all the horseback and camel riding in Kazakhstan.

Smiling, she said she took the gift as a compliment and added: ''I did think it was interesting though, that they talked a lot about the fact that they don't typically let women have these.''

At least it wasn't a mop. The whip stayed behind on Earth.

Eleven years ago, just before Shannon Lucid rocketed to the Russian space station Mir, a Russian space official said during a live prime-time news conference that he was pleased she was going up because ''we know that women love to clean.''

''I really haven't heard very much like that at all from the Russian perspective,'' Whitson said in an interview with The Associated Press last week. ''Russian cosmonauts are very professional and having worked and trained with them for years before we get to this point, I think makes it better because then it doesn't seem unusual to them either.''

''So I think I'm luckier. Shannon was probably breaking more barriers in that way than I have been,'' added Whitson, who spent six months aboard the space station in 2002.

Melroy, 46, a former test pilot from Rochester, N.Y., and Whitson, 47, a biochemist with a Ph.D. who grew up on a hog farm near Beaconsfield, Iowa, are among 18 female astronauts at NASA. Seventy-three astronauts are men.

What's more, Melroy is the only female shuttle pilot left at NASA. Eileen Collins, who in 1999 became the first woman to command a shuttle, quit NASA last year. Susan Kilrain, who flew as a shuttle pilot but never as a commander, resigned in 2002. Both have children.

Melroy and Whitson are married to scientists, and neither has children.

The countdown started Saturday for Discovery's launch. There was concern about rain on Tuesday morning, but meteorologists put the odds of acceptable weather at liftoff time at 60 percent. No major technical problems were being tracked.

This will be Melroy's third shuttle flight; her first two were as co-pilot. She became an astronaut in 1995, Whitson in 1996.

Their 1 1/2 weeks together in orbit will be extraordinarily busy and the work exceedingly complex. The shuttle is hauling up a pressurized compartment that will provide docking ports for the European and Japanese laboratories that will be launched over the next few months.

The 10 space fliers, seven of them men, will attach the new compartment, named Harmony, to the space station and move a girder and set of solar wings from one spot to another. Five spacewalks will be conducted, including one to test a repair technique on deliberately damaged shuttle thermal tiles.

Melroy and Whitson will oversee it all.

Their male crewmates offer plenty of praise. One of them -- Daniel Tani -- will report to both. He'll fly up on Discovery and swap places with an astronaut who has been living on the space station since June, and stay on board until another shuttle comes up in December.

''The joke has been that my life recently is run by women,'' said Tani, who is married with two young daughters. ''I have two bosses at work. I've got three bosses at home and as it was pointed out recently, much of the time when we're running the robotic arm, I'm the assistant to Stephanie'' Wilson, a shuttle crew member.

''So far, I've survived all of it so we'll see if I can get through the next couple months,'' he said with a laugh.

It's more of a novelty for Melroy's co-pilot, Marine Col. George Zamka. He never served with or for a woman in any of his military flying units.

''I understand it's a wonderful thing for young women to see Pam flying, but in terms of her, I look at her as an individual with some tremendous skills,'' Zamka said.

Melroy and Whitson said they don't know of any men -- American or Russian -- who would refuse to serve on their crews. It wasn't always that way at NASA, which didn't accept women as astronauts until 1978.

------

On the Net:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

A Giant Leap for Womankind, NYT, 20.10.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Space-Shuttle-Women.html

Abortion Charges

Filed Against Kansas Clinic

October 18, 2007
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY

A county prosecutor in Kansas who waged a vociferous battle against abortion in his former role as the state’s attorney general filed dozens of felony and misdemeanor charges yesterday against a Planned Parenthood clinic, saying the facility provided illegal late-term abortions, among other crimes.

The prosecutor, Phill Kline, now the Johnson County district attorney, has a history of wrangling with the clinic, Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. When he was the state attorney general, from 2002 until last year, Mr. Kline, a conservative Republican, developed a reputation for challenging abortion providers.

In a suit that brought national attention to Kansas as a battleground for abortion rights, Mr. Kline sought the names and personal information of women and girls who had had abortions at the Planned Parenthood clinic and one other medical facility. Early last year, the State Supreme Court restricted the investigation, ruling that personal information must be removed from the records Mr. Kline sought. Mr. Kline’s effort to prosecute the clinics ultimately failed.

In a statement posted on his Web site, Mr. Kline said he would not comment on yesterday’s charges, which included 29 felony counts of providing false information and 84 misdemeanor counts of failure to maintain records, failure to determine viability for a late-term abortion and unlawful late-term abortion.

His office did not return a call for more information.

A spokeswoman for the Planned Parenthood clinic, which is based in Overland Park, Kan., said the organization would not respond to the charges until its lawyers had a chance to review the county’s documents, which arrived late yesterday afternoon.

But earlier in the day, Peter Brownlie, the president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, told The Associated Press that he had heard rumors for months that Mr. Kline was planning to file charges.

He also said that the clinic did not perform any abortions past the 22nd week of pregnancy. “We always provide high-quality care in full accord with state and federal law,” he said.

Ashley Anstaett, a spokeswoman for the current state attorney general, Paul Morrison, told The Associated Press that Mr. Morrison had already reviewed the accusations Mr. Kline’s criminal charges are based on and found no wrongdoing.

“We are skeptical that these charges have any merit, and we continue to wonder how much politics influenced Mr. Kline’s decision to file these charges,” Ms. Anstaett said.

Mr. Morrison, until recently a Republican, ran for attorney general as a Democrat and easily unseated Mr. Kline, who had been criticized for linking his campaign operation to evangelical churches.

A Johnson County District judge set a court date for Nov. 16.

    Abortion Charges Filed Against Kansas Clinic, NYT, 18.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/us/18abort.html

More Women Than Ever Enter West Point

October 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WEST POINT, N.Y. (AP) -- Cadet Karyn Powell falls in with the guys at midday formation. Same gray uniform. Same straight-ahead stare. Same dressing down from the platoon sergeant for the plebes' imperfectly kept rooms -- except for the bit about long hairs in the sink.

''I understand your guys hair falls off,'' he tells Powell and her roommate. ''Clean it up.''

Powell is among 225 young women who joined the Long Gray Line this year for the Class of 2011. That is the highest number of female cadets in a single class since women first came to the U.S. Military Academy in 1976 and the highest proportion for any class: 17 percent.

West Point administrators are greeting this milestone with little more than a shrug of their epauletted shoulders. The increase is slight, they say, and women have lugged the same heavy rucksacks as the men and chowed down next to them at West Point's Harry Potter-Gothic mess hall for three decades. Expectations are the same for every cadet.

But in this history-drenched institution on the Hudson River that has produced generals such as Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur and Norman Schwarzkopf, some female cadets say they still feel the need to prove they measure up.

''You don't want to give the reputation to girls that 'Oh, she can't do it because she's a girl.' And you don't want to appear like you get special treatment because you're a girl,'' said Karina Quezada, a 19-year-old plebe from Las Vegas.

''And don't whine!'' added Diane Leimbach, a plebe from Quincy, Ill.

Quezada and Leimbach roomed together this summer for ''beast barracks,'' West Point's six-week shakedown of in-your-face orders and long marches for incoming cadets. No leeway is given if you are, like Quezada and Leimbach, petite.

''I didn't want to quit because I didn't want to be 'that girl' and I didn't want to appear weak in the eyes of my squad leader, my squad mates,'' Leimbach said.

''As a female, you have to win the respect of the males sometimes ... And I did.''

President Ford signed legislation in 1975 opening the nation's service academies to women applicants, leading to 119 women studying at West Point the next year. The proportion of women at the academy hovered in the 10-12 percent range until around 1989, when it jumped to 14 to 16 percent, where it has stayed since then, said Col. Deborah McDonald, associate director of admissions.

That's in line with the proportion of women in active military duty.

The challenge now is recruiting at a time when troops are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. While McDonald said the academy has been able to meet recruiting goals for women, many parents now are ''tentatively holding back.''

''There's a lot of concern for the sons and daughters out there,'' McDonald said, ''but especially for daughters.''

West Point has made accommodations to women over the years. They can wear stud earrings and makeup. McDonald, Class of '85, thinks the best idea was to let female cadets wear long hair, providing it's kept above the collar. Hair buns do the trick. Often, the most obvious gender clue among the gray-clad cadets walking around the maze of granite buildings here is the knot of hair poking from under some caps.

''All the guys are kind of like your brothers,'' said Powell, 18, of West Harrison, Ind. ''You kind of help take care of them and they help take care of you. I don't really think there's any difference between being a guy and a girl here.''

West Point has been spared the sort of high-profile sex scandal that hit the Air Force Academy earlier this decade. But a Pentagon task force in 2005 found that inappropriate treatment of women -- including offensive comments, repeated and unwelcome propositions and offers to trade academic favors for sexual acts -- persisted at West Point and the Naval Academy.

West Point officials say they have made a number of changes since then, including the institution of a confidential reporting system and annually bringing in women who were raped to speak to cadets. New cadets said they were made to memorize reporting procedures.

''Our awareness of the situation has grown in the last two years,'' said Col. Jeanette McMahon, special assistant to the superintendent on human relations and a member of the Class of '83

McDonald said it is better for women at West Point compared to the early '80s when she and McMahon were cadets. She notes that today's female cadets regularly meet women who have had successful military careers, like McDonald and herself.

Quezada, the daughter of Vietnam veteran, can look for inspiration from the 61 military women at the faculty. And if she needs a boost of confidence, she can think of her sister, who graduated West Point in May.

Though a dozen female plebes had dropped out by late September, Quezada is confident she'll make it.

''I'm not going to be 'that girl' falling out,'' she said.

------

On the Net:

West Point: www.usma.edu

    More Women Than Ever Enter West Point, NYT, 4.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-West-Point-Women.html

Abortion Debate Rages in Chicago Suburb

September 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:03 a.m. ET
The New York Times

AURORA, Ill. (AP) -- The name of the company applying for the building permits sounded like just another firm. On paper, the brick structure looked much like any other medical complex.

Then it was revealed that the company, Gemini Office Development, is a subsidiary of Planned Parenthood -- and that the building would include space where abortions would be performed.

Now, the 22,000-square foot, $7.5 million building in this suburb 35 miles west of Chicago stands finished but empty while the city investigates whether any building permit laws were broken.

A federal judge could decide as soon as Thursday to order local officials to allow the clinic to open. That prospect has drawn round-the-clock protests to the site by anti-abortion activists.

The facility will be run by Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area, and that group's president and CEO, Steve Trombley, said the Gemini Office Development name was used to protect the clinic's staff and construction workers from the types of protests happening now.

A rally a month ago attracted about 1,000 people; last weekend 600 anti-abortion activists marched in smaller groups through a nearby neighborhood.

Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League said he held a teleconference this week with activists in more than 80 cities about a prayer vigil outside the clinic that has continued for more than 40 days.

''Am I glad that Planned Parenthood by being dishonest gave us an opportunity to shut them down in Aurora? I sure am,'' Scheidler said. ''I rejoice in it.''

Trombley maintains the group always truthfully answered questions from city officials and was clear the building would hold a medical facility.

In a telephone interview, Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, defended the use of Gemini as ''prudent'' and stressed that the clinic will offer a wide range of women's health care. Abortions account for about 10 percent of the services performed by Planned Parenthood in the Chicago area.

''Ground zero in the fight for women's access to reproductive health care just landed in a town in the middle of America,'' Richards wrote in a recent e-mail to supporters.

The head of another organization supporting Planned Parenthood said the clinic is being unfairly targeted by people trying to politicize a local permitting process.

''It's not fraud,'' said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women. ''If you say you're opening a medical clinic and performing legal medical procedures, it shouldn't matter if it's plastic surgery or podiatry or dentistry or women's reproductive health care.''

The City of Aurora hired an outside attorney to review hundreds of pages of documents related to the building and permitting process, public testimony and local laws.

Aurora spokeswoman Carie Anne Ergo said mayor Thomas Weisner's ''biggest concern is to get to the bottom of all the speculation and find out: Were the city of Aurora's local laws followed?''

Aurora doesn't want the clinic to open while the review is under way; Planned Parenthood asked a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction requiring the city to allow the facility to open Tuesday of this week as scheduled. Instead the judge ordered both sides to return for a Thursday hearing.

On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood instead held an open house for supporters only. Pink balloons flew outside the structure, which has security cameras along the perimeter and no windows at ground level.

Randall Doubet-King, a member of the Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area board is optimistic the clinic will be able to open soon, but feels his group ''underestimated how organized the opposition was.''

While the event was under way, more than a dozen opponents of the clinic walked in circles on a nearby sidewalk, holding signs like ''Stop Abortion Now'' and occasionally getting honks from motorists.

Laura Kurek, 39, of Aurora, said she has long opposed abortion but never got involved at the grass-roots level until she learned of the clinic opening in her town.

She's spent many of her evenings for the past month helping staff the prayer vigil, sometimes with her 16-year-old son. She doesn't believe Planned Parenthood should be able to provide teenagers with birth control and is concerned the clinic is located near schools.

''I think what a parent teaches their kids should stand,'' she said. ''I don't want anyone interfering with the morals I put on my son.''

------

On the Net:

Planned Parenthood: http://www.plannedparenthood.org

Pro-Life Action Network: http://www.prolifeaction.org

City of Aurora: http://www.auroragov.org

    Abortion Debate Rages in Chicago Suburb, NYT, 20.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Abortion-Clinic.html

FDA Set to OK Period Suppression Pill

May 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:32 p.m. ET
The New York Times

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Women looking for a simple way to avoid their menstrual period could soon have access the first birth control pill designed to let women suppress monthly bleeding indefinitely.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expect to announce approval Tuesday for Lybrel, a drug from Wyeth which would be the first pill to be taken continuously.

Lybrel, a name meant to evoke ''liberty,'' would be the fourth new oral contraceptive that doesn't follow the standard schedule of 21 daily active pills, followed by seven sugar pills -- a design meant to mimic a woman's monthly cycle. Among the others, Yaz and Loestrin 24 shorten monthly periods to three days or less and Seasonique, an updated version of Seasonale, reduces them to four times a year.

Gynecologists say they've been seeing a slow but steady increase in women asking how to limit and even stop monthly bleeding. Surveys have found up to half of women would prefer not to have any periods, most would prefer them less often and a majority of doctors have prescribed contraception to prevent periods.

''I think it's the beginning of it being very common,'' said Dr. Leslie Miller, a University of Washington-Seattle obstetrician-gynecologist who runs a Web site focused on suppressing periods. ''Lybrel says, 'You don't need a period.'''

While that can be done easily -- sometimes more cheaply -- by skipping the sugar pills or replacing birth-control patches or vaginal rings sooner, doctors say the trend is fueled mainly by advertising for the new options. They expect plenty for Lybrel's July launch, although Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth says it will market to doctors first.

Analysts have estimated Lybrel sales could reach $40 million this year and $235 million by 2010. U.S. sales of Seasonique, launched last August, hit $6.1 million in the first quarter of 2007. Predecessor Seasonale, which got cheaper generic competition in September, peaked at about $100 million. Yaz, launched last August, had first-quarter sales of $35.6 million; Loestrin 24, launched in April 2006, hit $34.4 million in the first quarter.

Still, some women raise concerns about whether blocking periods is safe or natural. Baltimore health psychologist Paula S. Derry wrote in an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal two weeks ago that ''menstrual suppression itself is unnatural,'' and that there's not enough data to determine if it is safe long-term.

Sheldon J. Segal, a scientist at the nonprofit research group Population Council, wrote back that a British study found no harm in taking pills with much higher hormone levels than today's products for up to 10 years.

''Nothing has come up to indicate any unexpected side effects,'' said Segal, who co-authored the book ''Is Menstruation Obsolete?''

Most doctors say there's no medical reason women need monthly bleeding and that it triggers health problems from anemia to epilepsy in many women. They note women have been tinkering with nature since the advent of birth control pills and now endure as many as 450 periods, compared with 50 or so in the days when women spent most of their fertile years pregnant or breast-feeding.

Dr. Mindy Wiser-Estin, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Little Silver, N.J., has long advocated menstrual suppression.

She has seen a big increase in the last year in patients asking about it, but has one concern that leads her to encourage younger women to take a break every 12 weeks. About 1 percent of oral contraceptive users become pregnant each year, and young women taking continuous pills who have never been pregnant may not recognize the symptoms, she said.

''They may not know it in time to do something about it,'' Wiser-Estin said.

Barr Pharmaceuticals of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., whose subsidiary Duramed already is developing a lower-estrogen version of Seasonique, said its research with consumers and health care providers indicates they feel four periods a year is optimal, said spokeswoman Amy Niemann.

Wyeth obviously thinks otherwise.

''It allows women to put their menstrual cycle on hold'' and reduces 17 related symptoms, from irritability to bloating, based on one small study, said Dr. Amy Marren, director of clinical affairs for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Marren said Lybrel contains the lowest dose of two hormones widely used in birth-control pills, ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel.

That might cause too much breakthrough bleeding, already a problem with some newer pills with low hormone doses, said Dr. Lee Shulman, a Chicago obstetrician-gynecologist who chairs the board of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.

In testing of Lybrel, 59 percent of women ended up with no bleeding after six months, but 18 percent of women dropped out of studies because of spotting and breakthrough bleeding, according to Wyeth.

''You're now basically trading scheduled bleeding for unscheduled bleeding, and I don't know whether American women will buy into that,'' Shulman said.

------

On the Net:

www.wyeth.com

Association of Reproductive Health Professionals menstruation site: www.arhp.org/healthcareproviders/resources/menstruationresources

Dr. Miller's Web site: www.noperiod.com

    FDA Set to OK Period Suppression Pill, NYT, 18.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-No-More-Periods.html

At Baptist school, Giuliani explains abortion view

Fri May 11, 2007
4:47PM EDT
Reuters
By Bruce Nichols

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, under fire from conservatives for his support of abortion rights, defended his views on Friday but said there were other important issues in the 2008 White House race.

The former mayor of New York City and the leader in national polls for the Republican nomination argued the fight against international terrorism and preserving the free-market economy are too crucial to let one issue divide Republicans.

"I disagree with myself sometimes, and I change my mind sometimes," Giuliani said to laughter as he addressed a largely anti-abortion audience at Houston Baptist University.

The lone candidate in the Republican field to support a woman's right to an abortion, Giuliani was criticized for appearing to vacillate on the issue in last week's debate in California. Asked whether the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade should be overturned, Giuliani said it would be OK either way but that he would appoint judges and let them do their job.

On Friday, Giuliani restated his personal opposition to abortion but support of a woman's right to choose.

"It's a difficult issue," he said.

He sought to defuse the potent subject that could harm his chances of winning over primary voters who tend to be more conservative, saying Republicans risk losing the White House if they allow themselves to be divided.

"If we don't find a way of unifying around broad principles ... we're going to lose this election," Giuliani said.

And he called for more respect between people who have good-faith disagreements about issues.

"Those principles come from God, and that's why we're so lucky," he said.

A member of the audience, Carla Cox, who said she was firmly against abortion and skeptical of Giuliani, praised his appearance.

"He was a lot warmer than he comes across on television," said Cox, a marketing director for a home health care company. "His authenticity doesn't have a chance to come across in those sound bites."

    At Baptist school, Giuliani explains abortion view, R, 11.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1146061820070511

Giuliani to Support Abortion Rights

May 10, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MARC SANTORA

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign — seeking to accomplish the unusual task of persuading Republicans to nominate an abortion rights supporter — is eyeing a path to the nomination that would try to de-emphasize the early states in which abortion opponents wield a great deal of influence. Instead they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina.

That approach, they said, became more appealing after the Legislature in Florida, another state they said would be receptive to Mr. Giuliani, voted last week to move the primary forward to the end of January.

The shift in emphasis comes as the Giuliani campaign has struggled to deal with the fallout from the first Republican presidential candidate debate, in which he gave halting and apparently contradictory responses to questions about his support for abortion rights.

Mr. Giuliani’s aides were concerned both because the responses opened him up to a new round of criticism from abortion critics, who have never been happy with the prospect of a Republican presidential candidate who supports abortion rights, while threatening to undercut his image as a tough-talking iconoclast who does not equivocate on tough issues.

The campaign’s approach would be a sharp departure from the traditional route to the Republican nomination in the last 20 years, in which Republicans have highlighted their antiabortion views.

Mr. Giuliani hinted at what aides said would be his uncompromising position on abortion rights yesterday in Huntsville, Ala., where he was besieged with questions about abortion and his donations to Planned Parenthood. “Ultimately, there has to be a right to choose,” he said.

Asked if Republicans would accept that, he said, “I guess we are going to find out.”

Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that his stance on abortion alone might disqualify him with some voters, but he said, “I am at peace with that.”

His aides said that in focusing on the Feb. 5 and Florida primaries, they were not writing off Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, acknowledging the historic importance of those states and arguing that Mr. Giuliani could do well in South Carolina and New Hampshire. But they said the events of the past week had reinforced the notion that later states were more promising for a moderate Republican, particularly one who was a political celebrity with a big campaign bank account.

Along those lines, campaign aides said they were still debating whether Mr. Giuliani would participate in a nonbinding straw poll of Iowa Republicans. That huge Republican gathering this summer is a critical early test for anyone taking part in the caucuses next January.

At the same time, Republicans in New Hampshire said yesterday that Mr. Giuliani had been a notably infrequent visitor there, causing annoyance among party activists and speculation that he has given up on the state.

Giuliani advisers, describing their strategy in what has emerged as one of the most challenging weeks of his campaign, said Republican primary voters would forgive their concerns about him on abortion and other social issues if they concluded that his positions on those issues would actually appeal to Democratic voters and thus make him the strongest Republican presidential candidate in 2008.

From that perspective, Mr. Giuliani benefits from the fact that his major opponents, Senator John McCain of Arizona and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, are also viewed by Republicans as flawed in some respects. It was revealed yesterday, for instance, that Mr. Romney’s wife had also donated to Planned Parenthood.

“We have so many candidates out there — and there is no one emerging candidate — that electability is clearly an issue, and people are judging that,” said Saul Anuzis, the Michigan Republican Party chairman. “There is a pretty big fear with respect to a President Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama. And people saying we want to make sure we can beat them.”

Mr. Giuliani’s aides argued that Republican voters had been aware of his support for abortion rights before last Thursday’s debate. And they argued that abortion and other social issues were not as decisive for Republican primary voters in this election, providing Mr. Giuliani with an opportunity to break from a 30-year tradition and run as a Republican nominee who supports abortion rights.

His aides said polling had found a relatively small number of voters who would base their vote solely on abortion. They argued that Mr. Giuliani’s appeal was based on what many Americans see as a tough leadership style that helped turn New York City around in the 1990s, and carry it through the attacks of Sept. 11.

“Conventional wisdom says he can’t” win the nomination, said Mike DuHaime, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign manager, who then played down the significance of the discordance between Mr. Giuliani and much of his party on abortion and other social issues. “But we believe that based on his record in New York City, based on his leadership when America was tested on Sept. 11, that he can.”

The risks for Mr. Giuliani are clearly high. Polling continues to show abortion is a major concern of Republican primary voters. In a New York Times/CBS News poll in March, 41 percent of Republicans thought abortions should be prohibited, compared with 23 percent of Americans in general; in addition, 53 percent of Republicans said they wanted a Republican presidential nominee who would make abortions more difficult to get.

The first President Bush supported abortion rights early in his political career. He opposed abortion rights after he ran for vice president, with Ronald Reagan, and when he was elected president in 1988. Mr. Romney also moved from supporting abortion rights to opposing them as he approached the 2008 presidential election.

Some conservative Republicans said abortion alone was a major hurdle for Mr. Giuliani.

“I think it’s a big problem for him,” said Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime opponent of abortion. “The Republican Party has been pro-life in its platform ever since 1976, the first platform after Roe, and I think most of the Republicans understand they can’t afford to lose the pro-life constituency.”

Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, the conservative magazine, said, “You can’t win as a pro-choicer who is going to deliberately set on challenging the party’s orthodoxy on the issue.”

“It doesn’t have to take him down,” Mr. Lowry said of Mr. Giuliani and the abortion issue, “but if he continues to mishandle it, it’s going to be a real problem for him. One of the big ironies for him is he doesn’t care about abortion.”

    Giuliani to Support Abortion Rights, NYT, 10.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/us/politics/10giuliani.html?hp

Bush Warns of Vetoes Over Abortion Issue

May 4, 2007
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, May 3 — President Bush told Congressional leaders Thursday that he would veto any legislation that weakened federal policies or laws on abortion.

In a two-page letter sent to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Mr. Bush said his veto threat would apply to any measures that “allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life.”

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life, characterized the president’s message as “drawing a bright line.”

A statement from the group noted that many appropriations bills that Congress will take up include provisions to limit federal financing of abortion and that abortion rights groups have been urging Democratic leaders in Congress to change.

For example, a provision is under consideration for a foreign appropriations bill that would end a ban on discussing abortion in family planning clinics in developing nations.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said she interpreted the president’s letter as a broader threat “to veto any pro-choice legislation.”

“Instead of trying to work with Congress he’s trying to threaten Congress, and that won’t work,” he said.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said: “The president felt that it was important to remind Congress of his position on these issues. It’s not about vetoing, it’s about standing firm on his core beliefs.”

    Bush Warns of Vetoes Over Abortion Issue, NYT, 4.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/washington/04veto.html

Giuliani says repeal of abortion law would be "OK"

Fri May 4, 2007
9:20AM EDT
Reuters

SIMI VALLEY, California (Reuters) - To Sam Brownback, it would be "a glorious day," and to Tom Tancredo the "greatest day in this country's history." For Rudolph Giuliani, repeal of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion "would be OK."

Republican presidential hopefuls, at their first debate on Thursday, were asked if repeal of the Roe v. Wade decision would be a good day for America.

"It would be OK to repeal," said Giuliani, New York's former mayor, contending with his record of support for abortion rights as he courts conservative Republicans.

"I think the court has to make that decision and then the country can deal with it. We're a federalist system of government and states can make their own decisions," said Giuliani, who leads Republicans in the polls.

Giuliani, a Roman Catholic, maintains he personally thinks abortion is wrong but believes it is ultimately a woman's choice, a position that goes against the grain of the social conservatives who carry big clout in the Republican primaries.

His lawyerly response contrasted sharply with some other candidates who jumped at the chance to burnish their anti-abortion credentials.

"After 40 million dead because we have aborted them in this country, I would say that that would be the greatest day in this country's history when that, in fact, is overturned," said Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

"It would be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom," said Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney seized the chance to explain his changed position on abortion.

"Well, I've always been personally pro-life, but for me, it was a great question about whether or not government should intrude in that decision," Romney said.

He said he changed his position after the debate in his state over cloning. "It's a "brave new world" mentality that Roe v. Wade has given us, and I changed my mind," he said.

(Writing by Vicki Allen in Washington, editing by Peter Cooney; World Desk Americas)

Giuliani says repeal of abortion law would be "OK", R, 4.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0319862920070504