Turmoil Under the G.O.P. Tent

By Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles

It began as a campaign waged by Rolodex. Last December Glenda Greenwald, former publisher of Michigan Woman magazine, and a small band of Republican women hit the phones, asking people to join the first nationwide fund-raising network to support G.O.P. women candidates who favor the right to abortion. By March, her New York-based wish (Women in the Senate and the House) List had raised $180,000 and enlisted 250 members, each of whom pays dues of $100 a year and donates at least $100 to two candidates endorsed by the organization. "The only way we can help ourselves is to elect pro-choice women legislators," says Greenwald. "Abortion rights are basic, necessary, important, urgent, critical."

Feminist anger at the chipping away of abortion rights is hardly confined to the Democratic Party. In 1988 the G.O.P. adopted a platform plank stating that "the unborn child has a fundamental right to life" and calling for a human-life amendment that would ban abortion outright. When that position began to alienate women, particularly young suburban voters, the late G.O.P. chairman Lee Atwater urged the party to become a "big tent" able to accommodate both sides on the abortion debate. The party has been slow to follow his advice.

As a result, Republican women are feeling disaffected. "As we get closer to the demise of Roe, frustration is intensifying," says Republican political consultant Eileen Padberg. Of the more than 50 Republican women who are running for congressional and state offices this year, more than 75% are abortion-rights advocates. In tough primary races against antiabortion opponents, many have made abortion the central theme of their campaigns.

The G.O.P.'s women candidates tend to be more progressive on family and social issues such as day care than their male Republican counterparts, but every bit as fiscally conservative. The combination is a strong lure for middle-class voters. A number of female candidates who support abortion rights have won primary battles that could portend problems for antiabortion Republicans. In Houston, for example, congressional candidate Dolly Madison McKenna defeated antiabortion opponent Esther Lee Yao although Yao outspent her several times over. In Illinois' Republican primary, state representative Penny Pullen, an antiabortionist and disciple of right-to-lifer Phyllis Schlafly, was defeated by abortion-rights advocate Rosemary Mulligan.

With the Republican Convention four months away, WISH List leaders are directing their energy toward raising money and getting candidates elected. Other pro-abortion rights groups have launched a campaign to force a change in the party platform's antiabortion language. Their chance of success is slim because George Bush is sticking to his antiabortion stance to placate conservatives. That rigid stand could trigger a revolt by Republican women who are threatening to cross party lines to support candidates who favor the right to abortion. "All my adult life I have been a devoted Republican woman," says Harriett Wieder, a member of the board of supervisors in Orange County, Calif. "Now I'm a woman Republican. Gender comes before party." That so many G.O.P. women agree with her could mean trouble under the big tent.