Abortion 'Purity Test' Is New to Republicans

Not even 'conservative issue' for older generation: Goodman
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted May 15, 2009 1:45 PM CDT
Abortion 'Purity Test' Is New to Republicans
Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., center, arrives for a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, May 15, 2009.   (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Abortion has become “the purity test for remaining in the GOP’s inner circle,” writes Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe: The Republican Party is shedding and shunning abortion-rights supporters it once called its own. But it wasn’t always that way—even “Mr. Conservative” Barry Goldwater supported a woman’s right to choose, saying it wasn’t “a conservative issue.”

What if, Goodman asks, the first Supreme Court abortion case had been that of a pregnant Air Force captain told she had to abort her child or resign? If that case had reached the high court, would a GOP concerned with “government power-grabs” have realized that “a government that can force a woman to have an abortion is the same government that can force a woman to continue the pregnancy?” (More abortion stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X