Abortion stances pose risks for Romney, Giuliani

One governed a liberal state. The other led a liberal city. Both are Republicans. Both are running for president. Both have a history of favoring abortion rights.

But that's largely where Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani part ways on the emotionally and politically charged issue of abortion, which has dogged both of them throughout the early months of the 2008 presidential primary race.

As they head into the second Republican debate of the campaign tonight in Columbia, S.C., the strategies Romney and Giuliani are employing to assuage social conservatives have grown more distinct. Where Romney , the former Massachusetts governor , courts GOP voters by saying flatly that he was wrong to favor abortion rights earlier in his political career, Giuliani , the former New York mayor, now emphasizes his support for abortion rights, hoping voters will admire his candor and look past his social positions to his record on taxes and leadership following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Both candidates' tactics carry some risk, particularly in a conservative state such as South Carolina, which is expected to hold the first Southern primary for GOP contenders. Romney must convince people that his change of heart was more than mere political convenience; Giuliani has to persuade staunch abortion opponents to back him despite their differences on such a hot-button issue.

Their divergent approaches are almost certainly going to be on display tonight when they gather with the rest of the Republican field on the University of South Carolina campus. Political analysts and advisers to the campaigns expect that the debate will delve deeply into the candidates' positions on abortion.

Romney ran for Senate in 1994, and then for governor in 2002, as a socially moderate Republican who described his support for abortion rights as "unequivocal." He has long attributed his reversal to a soul-searching debate over stem cell research while he was governor, from 2003 through 2006. As Romney tells it, his epiphany during that debate was that the mentality of abortion rights supporters had "cheapened life" to an unacceptable degree. From 2005 on, he began calling himself pro life.

That transformation was effectively blessed last week by the group Massachusetts Citizens for Life, which, despite its past criticism of Romney, gave him an award at a dinner in Agawam. "I am evidence that your work, that your relentless campaign to promote the sanctity of human life, bears fruit," Romney said in a speech to the organization, noting that two former presidents, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, also supported abortion rights before changing their minds.

Kevin A. Jourdain, chairman of the group's Pioneer Valley chapter, told the Globe in an interview at the dinner: "The whole purpose of the prolife movement is education and conversion."

"Mitt Romney is part of the conversion," Jourdain said. "We should applaud him. We should celebrate him."

Yet despite Romney's gains among social conservatives, he is still haunted by his past support for abortion rights. When news broke last week that Romney's wife, Ann, had once contributed $150 to Planned Parenthood, a reproductive rights group, Erick Erickson, who runs the influential conservative blog Redstate.com, said he could no longer support Romney's bid for president.

"It is because this is the straw that broke the camel's back -- one light piece of straw piled on a mountain of political opportunism and reckless vacillation," Erickson wrote.

But it is Giuliani who has faced more criticism recently over abortion.

At the first Republican presidential debate earlier this month, Giuliani struggled to answer a question about whether Roe v . Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, should be overturned, saying it would be OK either way.

That and other muddled statements on the issue in recent weeks prompted Giuliani and his campaign to decide that he needed to be clearer about what his views are. On Friday, he did that in a speech at Houston Baptist University, in which he affirmed his belief in a woman's right to choose, and challenged the Republican Party to embrace him as the most electable candidate.

"If we don't find a way of uniting around broad principles that will appeal to a large segment of this country, if we can't figure that out, we are going to lose this election," he said.

Giuliani continued the theme in an interview over the weekend on "FOX News Sunday," saying: "My attempt is to try to broaden the base of the Republican Party."

Though Giuliani has shifted to more conservative positions on aspects of abortion -- he now supports restrictions on federal funding for abortion, for example -- his direct challenge to a long-held Republican Party view is causing him friction.

"I just don't see much of a good side in South Carolina for his position," said Oran P. Smith, president of the Palmetto Family Council, a South Carolina activist group.

But Scott M. Malyerck, a former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party and now a volunteer adviser to Giuliani, said that Christian conservatives aren't the force they once were and that abortion isn't the litmus test it used to be. In that context, he said, voters will appreciate Giuliani's forthrightness.

"You know where he's coming from, he's had that position for a long, long time, and he's not about to change it," said Malyerck.

Neal Thigpen, a political scientist at Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C., said Giuliani is helped by the fact that some abortion opponents in the state are more concerned about beating the Democrats next year.

"Even some of these evangelicals, they will say, 'I tell you, man, Giuliani nationally could be a winner, and that's what we got to do is keep the White House, and I'll look over [his position on abortion]," Thigpen said.

Still, Thigpen said, Romney, through his conversion, has made more inroads among social conservatives. (The third leading candidate in the Republican field, Senator John McCain of Arizona, has long opposed abortion rights and stayed largely above the fray on the issue.)

One specific element of abortion that candidates might be asked about in tonight's debate is a controversial bill in the South Carolina Legislature that would require doctors to show or offer pregnant women considering an abortion ultrasounds of their fetus. One measure passed the House and another is set to come before the state Senate today.

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.