The G.O.P. Splits on The Abortion Plank

SEPARATED BY A BROAD AVENUE AND A SCORE OF broad-shouldered Salt Lake City cops, two knots of demonstrators debated the abortion issue with chants and placards. THE TIME TO CHOOSE IS BEFORE BEDTIME, advised a pro-lifer sign. PARTY PLATFORM: OUT OF BOARDROOMS, INTO WOMEN'S WOMBS took the originality prize among the pro-choicers. Ann Stone, a conservative who usually supports the President, elicited smiles on both sides of West Temple Street when she cracked, "George Bush knows there are pro-choice Republicans; he's married to one!"

There was no good humor indoors at the official proceedings last week, as the Republican Platform Committee staged its hearing on social questions. Since 1980 the platform has taken a hard line against abortion and promoted the appointment of jurists who back that view. Now, with the Supreme Court poised to undermine or demolish Roe v. Wade, many Republicans want the party to moderate its stance. Stone, a direct-mail entrepreneur who has raised millions for conservative causes, is collecting money for pro-choice candidates.

She told the platform drafters that a party opposed to government intrusion into other sectors of society has no business promoting antiabortion legislation. "Are you all Republicans?" she demanded rhetorically. "I'm not clear on that." Mary Dent Crisp, a moderate who once served as the party's co-chair, warned of wholesale defections at the polls: "A woman's fundamental right to choose is far more important than party loyalty."

While the rebellion by Stone, Crisp and others captured media attention, their opponents held the high cards. Phyllis Schlafly, head of the Republican National Coalition for Life, insisted that neither Bush as a candidate nor the party as an institution could afford to waffle "on a high moral principle." The Bush campaign's representatives at the session quietly agreed. Campaign officials, who control the platform, will permit no compromise language and will probably be able to quash efforts to debate the issue at the Houston convention. A representative of the National Abortion Rights Action League murmured, "This is an exercise in futility."

But from Bush's viewpoint, the exercise is also painful. While his stance mollifies the moral conservatives whose support he must have in November, it offends moderates whose votes he would love to claim too. The House of Representatives gave him another headache by voting, 260 to 148, to overturn the Administration's ban on the use of fetal tissue obtained from planned abortions for medical research. The restriction had been imposed in response to pro-lifers' contention that use of such tissue increases the number of abortions. Bush promises a veto, which will almost certainly stick. His bona fides with his party's far-right wing will be strengthened, but so will the argument that he is a prisoner of a minority faction.