As mayor, Giuliani personally signed a proclamation designating “Roe v. Wade Anniversary Day” on the 25th anniversary of the landmark abortion rights ruling.
Now, as a presidential candidate, Giuliani has said, “I’m against abortion — I hate it.”
Conlin said she never heard anything like that when Giuliani was in office.
“He never seemed to have a struggle with the issue as mayor,” she said.
“He was very proudly pro-choice.”
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As mayor, he offered no such reservations: “I am pro-choice and pro-gay rights.”
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As mayor, Giuliani supported taxpayer-financed abortions for poor women, a position he reiterated in a 1997 National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League candidate questionnaire and again in an interview with CNN seven months ago.
“If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right, yes — I mean, if that’s the status of the law, then I would, yes,” he told CNN. But a day later, as Christian conservatives spread word of the CNN interview, the Giuliani campaign scrambled to clarify its position. “I’d want to see it decided on a state-by-state basis,” Giuliani said of the taxpayer-funding issue.
In the 1997 NARAL questionnaire, Giuliani also opposed restrictions on minors receiving abortions. But now he says he backs parental notification as long as a judge can waive the requirement in some circumstances.
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“I have not supported [a ban on partial-birth abortion] and I do not see my position on that changing,” Giuliani told CNN at the time. But it has changed. After an April Supreme Court ruling upholding such a ban, Giuliani said, “I must say, Justice [Anthony] Kennedy’s opinion convinced me even more that my support for the ban is a correct one.” Kelli Conlin shakes her head at that. “He spoke at one of our events one time about that legislation and he was very intelligent about it,” she said, recalling Giuliani talking about how in those rare cases where life of the mother was in jeopardy that doctors needed the authority to make quick decisions. “He owes the American people an explanation of why he’s flip flopped so dramatically,” Conlin said.
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