ASHINGTON - Abortion politics, which almost always agitates the GOP, rarely causes Democratic primary candidates to squirm. No wonder Republicans are reacting with glee - and Democrats with a little alarm - to the dust-up between Al Gore and Bill Bradley over who is more committed to a woman's right to choose to have an abortion.
''I love it!'' said Linda DiVall, a Republican pollster who spends a lot of time worrying about how the GOP can close the gender gap. ''To have Democrats embroiled on abortion, even for a couple of days, shows women voters that they, too, have divisions on the issue.''
Abortion-rights activists, who are attuned to every nuance on the issue, said Bradley and Gore have the same position on abortion: They support legalized abortion and are in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, which in its 1996 platform endorsed a woman's right to choose an abortion and to receive public funding to pay for it, if necessary.
''Both Bradley and Gore are staunchly, solidly prochoice, and as president each of them would ensure a woman's right to a legal abortion,'' said Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. She says she is a little exasperated that the heat of today's Democratic primary in New Hampshire has caused these candidates to shift the light from where she believes it really belongs.
''The real issue, and the threat they should be focusing on, is that the Republicans, even those who have toned down their rhetoric on abortion in their campaigns, are rabidly antichoice and as president will deny women their legal rights,'' Michelman said.
But since polls show Bradley doing less well than Gore among female voters, the New Jersey senator chose abortion as a way to get women's attention and use it as a wedge issue to attack the vice president's truthfulness and integrity.
At a New Hampshire debate last week, Bradley challenged Gore's credibility and credentials on abortion. The vice president said he had never wavered in his support of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. How then, Bradley questioned, could Gore have opposed public funding of abortions for poor women when he was a member of the US House in the late 1970s? As a senator, Gore supported Medicaid funds for abortions.
Later in the week, Gore also had to explain why, in letters he wrote to constituents in 1983 and 1987, he called abortion ''arguably, the taking of a human life.'' By Saturday, Bradley was airing a 30-second commercial accusing Gore of straddling the abortion issue, and the vice president was admitting that ''my position has changed.''
''I'm puzzled; I don't understand why Gore wasn't more forthcoming in the debate about his record on abortion,'' said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority and a longtime activist for women's rights. ''In the Senate Gore was a more forceful proponent of abortion rights than Bradley, and the Clinton administration's record on abortion has been excellent. But that isn't what Gore said.''
Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1984, served in the House with Gore and was troubled then by his opposition to Medicaid funds for abortions. ''I have a problem with Gore saying he has always been prochoice, but I also believe that he has grown and changed,'' Ferraro said.
The Democratic Party doesn't welcome dissent on the abortion issue. Since Roe v. Wade, all the party's presidential candidates have been abortion-rights supporters. In 1992, Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey was refused a speaking slot at the party's convention, reportedly because of his strong antiabortion views.
Nationally, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 51 percent of all Americans support a woman's right to choose an abortion. That's down from 60 percent in 1998.
But Gore isn't leaving the issue to chance. Saturday, his campaign had Representative Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat who chairs the congressional women's caucus, fly to New Hampshire and, along with Governor Jeanne Shaheen, defend the vice president's record on abortion at a women's forum in Manchester.
''Bradley is trying to create a difference where none exists,'' said Maloney, who last week got 33 other Democratic lawmakers to sign a letter praising the Clinton-Gore administration's tough line on abortion-clinic violence and vetoes of bills to outlaw certain late-term abortions.
