Bradley began obliquely, asking Gore whether he thought “consistency on fundamental issues of principle is important.” Gore, knowing that Bradley was coming crabwise to the subject of abortion, said, “I’ve always supported Roe v. Wade. I have always supported a woman’s right to choose.” Then he said:
“Now it’s true that early in my career I wrestled with the question of what kinds of exceptions should be allowed to the general rule that Medicaid should also pay for this procedure. I have come to the strong view that all women regardless of their income must have the right to choose…”
Bradley responded limply that “when you were in the Congress you had an 84 percent right-to-life voting record.” But that was hardly informative. Here is some history.
Gore was a congressman from 1977 through 1984. On June 26, 1984, 11 years after the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade held that at no point in gestation is a fetus a person, Gore voted to amend the Civil Rights Act to declare that “the term ‘person’ shall include unborn children from the moment of conception.” In letters to constituents he assured them that “I share your belief that innocent human life must be protected.”
In 1988, when Gore was seeking his party’s presidential nomination, he was asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “Didn’t you vote back in 1984 to set when one becomes a person at the time of conception, which would have, in effect, made abortion illegal?” Gore said: “No. No, I did not.” But the vote is on page H-7051 of the Congressional Record for June 26, 1984. So a Gore adviser told U.S. News–World Report (March 7, 1988), “Since there’s a record of that vote, we have only one choice. In effect, what we have to do is deny, deny, deny… We’ve muddled the point, and with luck attention will turn elsewhere.”
In 1992 Clinton, who knew a soulmate when he saw one, picked Gore as his running mate, and on “Meet the Press” (Sept. 6, 1992) Gore said, falsely, that the 1984 amendment had dealt only with “procedures in the third trimester.” In fact, the amendment was one sentence long and made no reference to trimesters. Last Oct. 31, when Gore was asked on ABC’s “This Week” about the 1984 vote, he tried a new line: “That was a procedural vote in the House.” That also is false.
By 1992 Senator Gore favored a bill that would have invalidated all restrictions on abortion up to “viability”–when the baby can live outside the womb–and even after viability if the abortion were needed for the mother’s emotional “health.” With that in mind, return to paragraph three above, and Gore’s description of what he “wrestled with” early in his career.
That description is exactly the opposite of the truth. The legislative question was not what exceptions there should be to “the general rule” that Medicaid should pay for abortions. By the time Gore got to Congress, there was no such general rule. There was, and is, a provision of law that Medicaid should not pay for abortions, with very few exceptions.
That provision is known as the Hyde Amendment. In a Sept. 10, 1980, letter Gore said: “I am a firm supporter of the Hyde Amendment.” How firm? Very. The original Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976, said Medicaid could fund abortion only when it is necessary to save the life of the mother. Subsequently the law has been changed to allow Medicaid payments for abortions in cases of rape and incest. Twice in 1977 Gore voted for those two exceptions, but thereafter he consistently voted against even such small weakenings of the ban on Medicaid funding.
The reason for the “evolution” of Gore’s position on abortion is obvious. When his pro-life convictions (so to speak) became inconvenient to his national ambitions, he changed them. Rep. Dick Gephardt did pretty much the same thing at about the same time for the same reason–the 1988 nomination contest. Such trimming of convictions for careerist reasons is not admirable, but neither is it shocking.
What is shocking–if any mendacity can shock in year eight of the Clinton-Gore era–is Gore’s Orwellian denial of stark facts. Clinton, always parsimonious with the truth, at last began to tell a bit of it when cornered by a stark fact–DNA from the blue dress. Gore, by denying a clear record, proves himself to be more audacious than Clinton.
But what of Bradley? He cited Gore’s pro-life voting record in Congress, so surely he knows the details recounted here. He seems to have contempt for Gore. Later in the debate, in an exchange about Medicare, Bradley said: “In politics… people make misleading statements. And most of them do it because they don’t know better. You know better. You know what you’re saying is not true.” Gore responded: “I haven’t accused you of lying.” Bradley was accusing Gore of lying, but he also was flinching from proving his point regarding Gore’s abortion record.
Clinton believes that the election of Gore would be vindication, of sorts. Clinton is correct. By electing Gore, who in that New Hampshire debate showed who he is, the country would be validating Clintonism, meaning a sociopathic indifference to the truth. “Why,” said Bradley to Gore, “should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you don’t tell the truth as a candidate?” That is a good question, but so is this: Why should the presidency be entrusted to Bradley if he is not strong enough, or does not feel strongly enough about the truth, to document Gore’s brazen trashing of the truth?
