TOLERATING INTOLERANCE

By Michael Kinsley

Has Bob Dole even read the current Republican platform provision on abortion? The 1992 platform declares: "We believe the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life that cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the 14th Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

Over the years, almost all the controversy has focused on the constitutional-amendment issue. But neither Dole nor the media have had anything to say regarding that last clause, about the 14th Amendment. It's a bomb.

The 14th Amendment guarantees all citizens "equal protection of the laws." It is the part of the Constitution used to bar state discrimination against blacks, women and so on. What, then, would it mean to guarantee fetuses equal protection of the laws? People who hire professional killers to eliminate their born children are prosecuted for murder. Under equal protection, the same would have to be true of women who hire doctors to eliminate their fetuses. Furthermore, many states execute people who deliberately kill, or arrange for the killing of, innocent human beings. The Republican platform is quite enthusiastic about this practice. But under equal protection, you certainly couldn't have the death penalty for killing a post-birth human being and a lesser punishment--or no punishment at all--for killing a fetus.

All this is not some fanciful constitutional interpretation. It's basic 14th Amendment doctrine. To be sure, most Republican politicians would indignantly--and sincerely--deny that they wish to execute women who procure abortions. But that just illustrates that many of them support the antiabortion platform, not out of heartfelt conviction, but as a pander to an especially ardent interest group. Still, it's their language. Dole and others voted for it in the past, even if they fudge this time around.

In his recent plea for "tolerance" and "civility" in the abortion debate, Dole got tolerance and civility off to a shaky start by accusing the Democrats of "hard-line views" and "extremism." Certainly nothing in the Democratic platform is as hard-line and extreme as the Republican call for executing abortion patients. But Dole wishes to make much of an episode at the 1992 Democratic Convention that has achieved mythic status in the abortion debate.

"I will not silence those who disagree" on abortion, Dole declared. "This has been the practice of the Democratic Party, which excluded one of its most popular leaders, Governor Bob Casey, from its last convention." Casey was not excluded from the convention. He was denied the opportunity to give a pro-life speech. That was stupid. But was it any more "intolerant" than what happened at the Republican Convention? There pro-choice Governor Bill Weld was allowed to give a speech, but pro-choice placards and banners were banned from the convention hall. As comparative examples of efforts to "silence" dissenters, you might call that a wash.

It's nice that Dole is prepared to "tolerate" pro-choice views. But what does that mean? It apparently means that he will permit people to vote for him even if they disagree with him on this issue. Presumably the same dispensation applies to all issues, although you don't hear Dole sweetly expressing tolerance of those who disagree about, say, tax cuts. Principled pro-lifers are right to feel bemused. Dole believes millions of innocent babies are being killed every year, but if it doesn't bother you, that's O.K. Medical savings accounts, on the other hand, are an absolute moral issue?

In fact, Dole's call for tolerance provoked a hilarious scholastic debate last week within the G.O.P. The question: Should the party officially declare itself to be tolerant on all issues (in the platform's preamble) or only on this one issue (in the abortion plank itself)? Most of the party's leading pro-lifers were prepared, in effect, to tolerate tolerance on abortion, provided that assault-weapons enthusiasts would be forced to tolerate tolerance as well. Pro-choice elements, though, did not care to share their precious hoard of tolerance with others.

Dole, surprisingly, sided with the choicers. He said abortion alone is a proper subject for tolerance, precisely because it is "a moral issue." But Dole has it exactly backward. If you're going to be intolerant about anything, surely moral issues outrank lesser concerns. And if abortion is the only moral issue by Dole's lights, what does that say about the rest of the Republican platform?

Dole would love to muddy the waters on abortion the way President Clinton has so skillfully muddied the waters on issues like welfare and crime. But for the right-to-lifers in his own party, of whom Dole claims to be one, the issue is inherently crystal clear. "Tolerance" must have seemed like a clever way to solve that puzzle. But a party that can get into a catfight about where in its platform a plea for tolerance should be inserted probably isn't ready to test-drive tolerance itself.