Abortion Advocate Says Rudy Giuliani’s Adoption Claims "Unsupportable" 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 29, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Rudy Giuliani has tried hard to use his supposed advocacy of adoption as the mayor of New York to combat Republican opposition to his pro-abortion views as he campaigns for president. His pro-adoption claims have been refuted on previous occasions and now a leading abortion advocate says they are "unsupportable."
Cory Richards is the senior vice president and vice president for public policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group affiliated with Planned Parenthood.
Richards wrote an opinion column published in the Los Angeles Times on Monday saying that Giuliani’s claims that his adoption advocacy resulted in a decrease in abortions in New York City can’t be supported.
Giuliani has said that, while he was mayor, New York City "increased adoption by 133% over the eight years before [he] came into office."
Giuliani added that the city "found that abortions went down by 18% during that period of time" and that he believes such figures can be achieved nationwide.
But Richards says the increase in adoptions Giuliani refers to is children in the city’s foster care system and "not in the rate at which women were continuing unwanted pregnancies and placing their infants for adoption rather than having abortions."
"Nothing in the data he cites indicates that there was any significant increase in the city’s newborn relinquishment rate while he was mayor," Richards says.
This isn’t the first time Giuliani’s adoption claims have come under scrutiny and been rebutted.
Earlier this month, Fordham University political science professor Bruce Berg reviewed all the tapes of Mayor Giuliani’s press conferences dating back to 1996 and said he never once saw the mayor promote adoption.
Berg says the mayoral 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.
Meanwhile, Giuliani 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.”
