Top Catholic Newspaper Tells Pro-Life Voters Rudy Giuliani Too Pro-Abortion 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 6, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A leading Catholic newspaper is suggesting to pro-life voters that they look elsewhere for a candidate in the Republican presidential primary rather than support Rudy Giuliani, who leads most polls. Editors at the National Catholic Register say the former New York City mayor is too pro-abortion to be considered.
In an editorial that appears on the newspaper’s web site Tuesday, and will be published in their next edition, the Register editors say they won’t go along with the notion that the pro-life movement has to support a pro-abortion president candidate this election.
"They hope that pro-lifers will ‘be reasonable,’ not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and go along quietly," the editorial says. "We won’t."
The newspaper points out that Giuliani has become a favorite of Republicans because of his handling of the September 11 terrorist attacks and his position on other issues.
But the editors reject the notion that "extremist Islam and the war on terror are such all-consuming issues, and we can’t be so caught up with abortion anymore."
They point to recent comments Giuliani has made on appointing judges and say he’s offering pro-life advocates a "deal" that they don’t think voters should take.
Last month, Giulinai tried to reassure pro-life voters by saying he would appoint judges in the mold of the ones President Bush nominated and pro-life advocates supported.
"I think the appointment of judges that I would make would be very similar to, if not exactly the same as, the last two judges that were appointed," Giuliani told the Fox news program Hannity & Colmes.
"If I had been president over the last four years, I can’t think of any, you know, that I’d do anything different with that," he said, referring to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
"I would appoint judges that interpreted the Constitution rather than invented it, understood the difference between being a judge and being a legislator," he said. "I do think you have sort of a general philosophical approach that you want from a justice, and I think a strict constructionist would be probably the way I’d describe it."
But the Register says that’s not good enough and doubts that a pro-abortion president would stay true to his word to appoint only pro-life friendly judges to the nation’s highest court.
"Would a pro-abortion president give us a pro-life Supreme Court justice? Maybe he would in his first term," the editors said.
"But we’ve seen in the Democratic Party how quickly and completely contempt for the right to life corrupts. Even if a President Giuliani did the right thing for a short time, it’s likely the party that accepted him would do the wrong thing for a long time," they added.
They also said a pro-abortion president could destroy the pro-life position the Republican Party and most of its members take.
"If pro-lifers went along, we’d soon find out that a pro-abortion Republican president would no longer preside over a pro-life party," they said. "The power a president exerts over his party’s character is nearly absolute. The party is changed in his image. He picks those who run it and, both directly and indirectly, those who enter it."
"A Republican Party led by Rudy Giuliani would be a party of contempt for the pro-life position, which is to say, contempt for the fundamental right on which all others depend," the newspaper said.
The bottom line for pro-life voters — especially Catholics — for 2008 according to the Register?
"Republicans have made inroads into the Catholic vote for years because of the pro-life issue. If they put a pro-abortion politician up for president, the gains they’ve built for decades will vanish overnight."
