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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.


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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