A GIRL'S BEST FRIENDS

By MARGARET CARLSON

RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ELAYNE BENNETT, HEAD OF BEST Friends, an organization that encourages schoolgirls to forgo sex, reached into her purse and found a piece of paper that board member Alma Powell had slipped in there a few days before. It turned out to be a check from General Colin Powell providing the major portion of matching funds for a $200,000 challenge grant. "I couldn't believe it, and I almost lost it," confesses Bennett. "Alma gave it to me with so little fanfare."

Best Friends started on a shoestring and a smile in a bedroom of Bennett's Chevy Chase, Maryland, home nine years ago, and now operates in 29 public schools nationwide. Beginning in sixth grade, the Friends curriculum pounds into girls--through one-on-one sessions with mentors, dance classes, outings to the theater and an awards lunch with speakers (General Powell in June)--that a happy life is more likely for those who put off sex. "Best Friends works because we have fun," says Bennett. "We glamourize abstinence as much as the culture glamourizes sex." Of the 600 Washington girls who have participated for two years or more, two have become pregnant (1.1%), as opposed to a 25% citywide rate for girls ages 13 to 18. Some are going to college with the help of a scholarship fund started with $25,000 in royalties from The Book of Virtues, a best seller by Bennett's husband William.

As notable as the program's success is the fact that two pro-lifers, the Bennetts, and two pro-choicers, the Powells, have found common ground at a time when any deviance from abortion orthodoxy creates seismic splits in the Republican Party. For his moderation--opposing a human-life amendment and distinguishing between early abortions and those post-viability, which he would restrict--Bennett has been labeled "pro-abortion" by Dr. James Dobson of the Focus on the Family. General Powell's revelation that he was pro-choice made him anathema to his party's right wing. In December, when Senator Bob Dole said he no longer supported a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions, he felt compelled to get off a letter immediately to the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed explaining that he didn't really mean it.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, who wants Republicans to rethink their hard-line abortion position, wishes Dole's remark had engendered an open debate. "Obviously, Dole has a more nuanced view," says Kristol. "A Dole Administration is not going to spend any political capital advancing a human-life amendment he doesn't believe in." The amendment grants the right to life from the moment of conception, a view that none of the leading Republican candidates except Pat Buchanan trumpets and one whose logical consequences--murder charges against doctors and women--only a minority of Americans would accept.

Those who oppose abortion could better spend their time working as hard as Elayne Bennett to make abortion unnecessary instead of banishing those who deviate from the party line. Candidates might consider discussing their beliefs instead of their positions and acknowledge what both sides know to be true: a late-term abortion is almost always wrong; but forcing a 13-year-old who accidentally becomes pregnant into motherhood by making first-trimester abortions illegal is its own kind of evil. Then maybe we could get somewhere. The Bennetts and the Powells have made an admirable start.