Rudy Giuliani’s Mayoral Backing of Adoption Over Abortion Never Existed 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 1, 2007
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) — Over the last several months, pro-abortion Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani has made adoption a hallmark of his campaign. He says adoption is his plan to combat abortions as president and that he reduced abortions as mayor, but a college professor says his archives show Giuliani never pushed it.
If Giuliani had an aggressive plan to reduce abortions in New York City — long considered the abortion capital of America because it has more abortions than most states — Fordham University political science professor Bruce Berg has never seen it.
That’s surprising considering Berg has DVD copies of every mayoral news conference in the city dating back to 1996.
"They don’t exist," Berg told the St. Petersburg Times of potential news conferences showing former Mayor Giuliani touting adoption over abortion.
In August, Giuliani made adoption one of his "12 Commitments to the American People" and claimed to have promoted it enough that it lowered abortions in the Big Apple.
"I would like to do that for America," he said. "I would like to see adoptions increase dramatically and I would like to see women considering abortion have that option available to them."
But Berg says the mayoral conference transcripts show repeated statements by Giuliani in 1997 and 1998 supporting abortion, saying abortions should be legal and criticizing the Republican Party for officially opposing abortion.
There’s nothing on adoption in those news conferences or others.
"He had the aura of a pro-choice mayor in New York and he milked that for all it was worth," Berg told the Times. "He certainly made that part of his persona as mayor."
Mary Alice Carr, vice president for communications at NARAL’s New York affiliate told the newspaper she can’t ever recall Giuliani promoting adoptions either. Instead, she says he gave her group candidate surveys showing a 100% pro-abortion view.
Statistics show he didn’t necessarily do much to promote them as mayor.
The mayor has previously claimed that adoptions went up 67 percent during his mayoral tenure, but the nonpartisan political watchdog Web site FactCheck said that number is inflated and put the rise at only 17 percent during his terms in office.
Although there were more adoptions during Giuliani’s time in office than that of his predecessor David Dinkins, adoptions under Giuliani decreased five out of his final six years in office.
Tom McClusky, vice president of the Family Research Council’s legislative branch, says “I think he’s taking credit for something he had very little to do with. Abortion did go down in the 90s, and it’s not really through any of his efforts.”
