[Apologetics] Thompson star dims on abortion issue

Mon Jul 9 18:43:22 EDT 2007

Thank Art.  I'm sure that the pro-abortion folks will chew on this for awhile.  However, as is mentioned at the end of this article, we have to focus on where he is now.  Remember "Roe" was pro-abortion at one time also.  Look where she is now on the issue.

  Dianne

Art Kelly <arthurkelly at yahoo.com> wrote:
  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-thompson8jul08,1,6126333.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

>From the Los Angeles Times

Thompson star dims on abortion issue

Conservatives are anxious after a family-planning
group claims that he once lobbied on its behalf
against the so-called gag rule.

By Janet Hook
Times Staff Writer

July 8, 2007

WASHINGTON — Republican political activists said
Saturday that reports that Fred D. Thompson had
lobbied to ease a controversial abortion restriction
have cast a shadow on his effort to persuade social
conservatives — a key constituency in his emerging bid
for the White House — that he is an unwavering
opponent of abortion.

Some Republican activists urged caution in evaluating
Thompson's record. Others considered it damaging for
questions to arise about his position on abortion, a
litmus-test issue for many social conservatives. 

"That would not be helpful," said Paul M. Weyrich, a
conservative leader who has not endorsed a
presidential candidate.

Evidence that Thompson worked for a family-planning
group in 1991 as part of his little-known but
extensive portfolio as a part-time lobbyist
underscores how much the public has yet to learn about
the former senator, who is best known for acting in
movies and on TV, especially his role as a district
attorney on the popular show "Law & Order." 

The article in Saturday's Los Angeles Times cited
records and the accounts of several people associated
with the issue. It also said Thompson's spokesman
strongly denied Thompson had performed such lobbying
work.

Some conservatives said the lobbying claims added to
anxieties. Though the GOP has been unwavering in its
opposition to abortion at least since President
Reagan, the positions of its presidential
front-runners appear to be less unequivocal.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani supports
abortion rights. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney
is a recent convert to opposing abortion rights. Sen.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) opposes abortion but has never
made that a central issue in his career.

"With all the people who keep changing their minds on
abortion, that's got to be unsettling," Weyrich said.

The result is a GOP abortion debate lacking one thing
that activists on both sides of the issue long for:
certitude. 

"People want to see clarity and consistency on this
issue," said Ted Miller, spokesman for NARAL
Pro-Choice America, which supports abortion rights. 

A big question for Thompson, who is expected to
declare his candidacy in the next week or two, is
whether this will disillusion Republicans who have
seen him as a white knight to rescue the party from
candidates unpalatable to many conservatives.

"This will hurt, particularly because conservatives
have been dying for a champion to be in the arena for
them," said David Carney, a New Hampshire-based GOP
strategist who is not aligned with any candidate. "A
lot hoped he was the guy
. People who really believe
in the pro-life cause will not be happy." 

As a Tennessee senator from December 1994 to January
2003, Thompson sided with antiabortion advocates on
most key issues. That record has been a big reason
conservatives have looked to him as an alternative to
established GOP candidates. 

But some critics have pointed to statements he made
before becoming senator to suggest that he was
sympathetic to abortion rights. Thompson has said that
those statements were misconstrued and that he has
become even more passionate in his abortion opposition
since seeing the sonogram of his now-3-year-old
daughter.

In 1991, according to several people then affiliated
with the National Family Planning and Reproductive
Health Assn., he accepted an assignment from the
association to lobby the White House to withdraw or
relax a "gag rule" that barred abortion counseling at
clinics that received federal money.

The minutes of a 1991 meeting — given to The Times —
say the association's president reported to the board
that the association had hired him. And a Democratic
colleague of Thompson's at the lobbying and law firm
also recalled Thompson having worked for the
association. 

Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo has adamantly denied
that Thompson worked for the group. And the White
House official whom the group was seeking to reach,
then-Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, said Thompson
didn't lobby him.

Some Republicans argued that the account was
politically motivated, noting it came from
abortion-rights advocates with little affection for
the GOP.

Thompson's GOP rivals in the presidential contest
seized on the account but declined to comment for the
record.

"Each day that gets closer to Fred Thompson's
announcement as a candidate, we learn new information
about his record and his career that shows he doesn't
have the conservative credentials that primary voters
are looking for," said a strategist for a rival.

However, a leading backer of Romney is more forgiving.
Romney is himself asking voters to pay more attention
to his current abortion opposition than to his past
record.

Thompson "had a change of heart on the abortion
issue," said James Bopp Jr., an antiabortion leader.
"This story is about something that happened in 1991.
He's walked through the burning embers, and there is
no reason to think his change of heart was not
sincere." 

Anne Hendershott, author of "The Politics of
Abortion," said the report would probably not hurt
Thompson if antiabortion activists were pragmatic and
focused on where he stood now, not on the position of
a group he might have worked for 16 years ago: "Fred
Thompson says he is pro-life now, and that is what is
important to the pro-lifers." 

But the account is also a reminder that, although
Thompson is positioning himself to run as an
anti-establishment outsider, his resume is that of a
consummate Washington insider.

"He wasn't the conservative firebrand some are making
him out to be now," Carney said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
janet.hook at latimes.com

--

Times staff writer Mark Barabak contributed to this
report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-thompson7jul07,1,1358124.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

>From the Los Angeles Times

Thompson lobbied for abortion-rights group, it says

A spokesman for the GOP presidential hopeful says he
did no such work. An ex-colleague calls the denial
'bizarre.
'
By Michael Finnegan
Times Staff Writer

July 7, 2007

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as
an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment
from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush
White House to ease a controversial abortion
restriction, according to a 1991 document and several
people familiar with the matter. 

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied
that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes
of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family
Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the
group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President
George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that
barred abortion counseling at clinics that received
federal money, according to the records and to people
who worked on the matter.

The abortion "gag rule" was then a major political
flashpoint. Lobbying against the rule would have
placed Thompson at odds with the antiabortion movement
that he is now trying to rally behind his expected
declaration of a presidential bid. 

Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo adamantly denied that
Thompson worked for the family planning group. "Fred
Thompson did not lobby for this group, period," he
said in an e-mail. 

In a telephone interview, he added: "There's no
documents to prove it, there's no billing records, and
Thompson says he has no recollection of it, says it
didn't happen." In a separate interview, John H.
Sununu, the White House official whom the family
planning group wanted to contact, said he had no
memory of the lobbying and doubted it took place.

But Judith DeSarno, who was president of the family
planning association in 1991, said Thompson lobbied
for the group for several months.

Minutes from the board's meeting of Sept. 14, 1991 — a
copy of which DeSarno gave to The Times — say: "Judy
[DeSarno] reported that the association had hired Fred
Thompson Esq. as counsel to aid us in discussions with
the administration" on the abortion counseling rule.

Former Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.), a colleague at
the lobbying and law firm where Thompson worked, said
that DeSarno had asked him to recommend someone for
the lobbying work and that he had suggested Thompson.
He said it was "absolutely bizarre" for Thompson to
deny that he lobbied against the abortion counseling
rule.

"I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked
to [DeSarno] about the fact that she was very pleased
with the work that he was doing for her organization,"
said Barnes. "I have strong, total recollection of
that. This is not something I dreamed up or she
dreamed up. This is fact."

DeSarno said that Thompson, after being hired,
reported to her that he had held multiple
conversations about the abortion rule with Sununu, who
was then the White House chief of staff and the
president's point man on the rule.

Thompson kept her updated on his progress in telephone
conversations and over meals at Washington
restaurants, including dinner at Galileo and lunch at
the Monocle, she said. At one of the meals, she
recalled, Thompson told her that Sununu had just given
him tickets for a VIP tour of the White House for a
Thompson son and his wife.

"It would be an odd thing for me to construct that
thing out of whole cloth," DeSarno said. "It happened,
and I think it's quite astonishing they're denying
it."

Sununu said in a telephone interview: "I don't recall
him ever lobbying me on that at all. I don't think
that ever happened. In fact, I know that never
happened." He added that he had "absolutely no idea"
whether Thompson had met with anybody else at the
White House, but said it would have been a waste of
time, given the president's opposition to abortion
rights.

In response to Sununu's denial, DeSarno said Thompson
"owes NFPRHA a bunch of money" if he never talked to
Sununu as he said he had.

At the time, Thompson was a lobbyist and lawyer "of
counsel" to the Washington firm of Arent Fox Kintner
Plotkin & Kahn.

DeSarno said the family planning association paid the
firm for Thompson's work. Marc L. Fleischaker,
chairman of Arent Fox, declined to comment.

Corallo, the spokesman for Thompson, was asked Friday
about the board minutes and the five people who said
they recalled Thompson accepting the lobbying
assignment. He responded in an e-mail, saying that
Thompson "may have been consulted by one of [his]
firm's partners who represented this group in 1991."

Corallo said it was "not unusual for one lawyer on one
side of an issue to be asked to give advice to
colleagues for clients who engage in conduct or
activities with which they personally disagree."

Any work that Thompson did to challenge the abortion
rule could complicate his appeals to conservatives in
the contest for the Republican presidential
nomination. He reportedly plans to join the race this
month.

For weeks, Thompson has tried to pick up support from
religious conservatives dissatisfied with the top GOP
White House contenders, some of whom have backed
abortion rights. In a videotaped message to the
National Right to Life Convention in Kansas City last
month, Thompson said the group's issues were "ever
more profound to me as the years go by."

A senator from December 1994 to January 2003, Thompson
voted along antiabortion lines, but his statements
have occasionally raised questions about his attitude
toward the cause.

On Fox News last month, he was asked why he checked a
box on a questionnaire in his 1994 Senate campaign
beside a statement saying that abortion "should be
legal in all circumstances for the first three
months."

"I don't remember that box," Thompson replied. "You
know, it was a long time ago, and I don't know if I
filled it out or my staff, based on what they thought
my position was, filled it out."

The Tennessean newspaper reported that Thompson, when
filling out a 1996 Christian Coalition survey, marked
himself as "opposed" to a constitutional amendment
protecting "the sanctity of human life." 

The newspaper said he included a handwritten notation
saying: "I do not believe abortion should be
criminalized. This battle will be won in the hearts
and souls of the American people."

In recent weeks, Thompson has described himself as
fundamentally "pro-life," saying the issue has "meant
a little more to me" since seeing the sonogram of his
now-3-year-old daughter.

Best known for playing a district attorney on NBC's
"Law and Order," Thompson worked as a part-time
lobbyist over nearly three decades, both before and
after his Senate service. His clients included a
General Electric aircraft-engine maker, Westinghouse
Electric Corp. and the Equitas insurance company.

DeSarno and others said the family planning group
hired Thompson shortly after the Supreme Court upheld
the "gag rule" in 1991. 

That ruling led to a protracted tussle between Bush
and Congress. The rule was eliminated in 1993 by
President Clinton on his third day in office.

In addition to Barnes and DeSarno, three other people
said they recalled Thompson lobbying against the rule
on behalf of the family planning association.

Susan Cohen, a member of the association's board of
directors in 1991, said in reference to DeSarno and
Thompson: "We were looking, of course, for a
Republican who might have some inroads to the White
House at that time, and so that's how she came upon
contacting him." 

Said Bill Hamilton, who then directed the Washington
office of the Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, a group that was DeSarno's main ally in
lobbying on the abortion counseling rule: "I
definitely recall her reaching out to [Thompson] and
engaging him in some way, and trying to squeeze the
White House through him." 

Sarah L. Szanton, who worked for DeSarno as director
of government relations for the family planning
association, agreed that Thompson "consulted on our
behalf against the gag rule."

"I remember that he did it," Szanton said. "I just
knew he was part of the good fight."

The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health
Assn. is a Washington nonprofit organization that
represents family planning clinics and other groups.
It advocates "reproductive freedom" and broad access
to birth control.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

michael.finnegan at latimes.com

ART KELLY, ATM-S
13524 Brightfield Lane
Herndon, Virginia 20171-3360
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