c. 1996 Religion News Service

CHICAGO _ Supporters and opponents of legal abortion are pressing their conflicting cases at the Democratic National Convention, but the volatile issue _ still the most divisive in the nation’s culture wars _ is creating barely a ripple among the party faithful.

While the issue threatened to dominate and divide the Republicans, who gathered for their national convention in San Diego earlier this month, Democratic delegates are much less polarized on the issue. Sixty one percent of Democrats believe that abortion should be permitted in all cases, according to one poll, and so-called”tolerance”language was inserted into the party platform, saying the party will”respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue.” An effort by GOP nominee Bob Dole to insert”tolerance”language for abortion-rights supporters in the Republican platform was beaten back by conservative religious activists at the party’s convention.

The Democratic platform was presented to delegates Tuesday (Aug. 27) afternoon and at least one abortion opponent, Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), who was the architect of the tolerance language, expressed appreciation for its inclusion.”Many of us (anti-abortion Democrats) have felt left out,”Hall said.”But this year is different. For the first time, the Democratic Party has included in our platform a conscience clause.”The Democratic Party is indeed the party of true inclusiveness,”he said.

Unlike the Republicans, however, where conservatives threatened to bolt if the party’s opposition to abortion was at all softened, no committed delegates or elected officials in the minority on the abortion issue threatened to quit the Democratic Party.”People (here) are committed to choice,”said attorney Barbara Weiner, who attended a worship service and rally sponsored by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice Monday (Aug. 26), just blocks from the United Center site of the convention.

The two events were intended to make the point that people of faith can, on the basis of their religion, support legal abortion or oppose it.

But many of the several hundred people attending the worship service at the First Baptist Congregational Church said their”prayerfully pro-choice”decisions do not receive the same kind of media attention as the faith-based opposition to abortion expressed by such groups as the Christian Coalition.”It’s an easy equation: If you’re Christian, you’re anti-choice,”said the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, president of the coalition of 40 religious and ethical denominations and agencies.”It’s a nice hook, but it’s a lie.”We are pro-choice not because we have decided that some issues are more important than our faith commitments and the teachings of our Scriptures, but because we have studied our Scriptures and our traditions and have come to the conclusion that abortion can sometimes be a morally appropriate choice,”she said.

Inside the convention, the religious rhetoric of abortion-rights supporters was also expressed by Kate Michelman, a Roman Catholic, who heads the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), the nation’s largest activist abortion-rights group.”I pray that no woman will have to face the abortion decision,”Michelman said in presenting the platform plank on abortion.”But if she does, it is a choice she makes with her conscience, with her moral values and with her God.” Despite the Democrats’ overwhelming support for abortion rights, abortion opponents also sought to make their case to delegates _ and the public _ at the convention.

Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, briefly showed his organization’s flag in Chicago. The Coalition, which deployed a large and sophisticated political arsenal at the San Diego convention to ensure that the GOP retain its hardline opposition to abortion, was virtually invisible at the Democratic parley.

But Reed vowed that his forces will continue to fight to change the Democrats’ position supporting legal abortion.”One day we’re going to change that platform,”Reed told several hundred cheering supporters at a rally held at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Reed, accompanied by Democratic anti-abortion members of Congress _ Reps. Ralph Hall (Texas), Collin Peterson (Minnesota), Charles Stenholm (Texas), and Bart Stupak (Michigan) _ argued that such representatives did well in the 1994 mid-term elections and would not be voted out of office even in a Republican landslide.”We vote our conscience,”Reed said of the Coalition’s members.”We are Christians first, Americans second, and Republicans or Democrats third,”he said.

The party’s most prominent crusader against legal abortion, former Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey also was in Chicago, holding a series of news conferences to promote the cause. Casey chastised President Clinton and the Democratic Party for again refusing to let him speak from the convention podium.

Casey, who was rejected as a convention speaker in 1992, told a Tuesday (Aug. 27) news conference that Clinton was harming his re-election chances by embracing the cause of legal abortion.”I believe the Democratic Party ought to be pro-woman, pro-child and pro-life,”Casey said.”I asked for the opportunity to deliver this message from the podium of the Democratic National Convention. For the second time in four years, my request fell on deaf ears.”

MJP END RNS