WASHINGTONHere's an example of ''moderation'' on abortion in George W. Bush's Texas, signed into law by the governor just this year:
A teenager becomes pregnant and has what lawyers call a justifiable fear of abuse if she goes to her parents. So she goes to her grandparents, and they take her to a state where abortions services are confidential. The grandparents have now committed a felony.
Here's an example of reasoned substantive, discussion of abortion in the nascent campaign for the Republican presidential campaign:
Steve Forbes is on the trail, explaining his conversion as an anti-government crusader into a down-the-line advocate of government regulation of pregnancy. Up pops a right-to-lifer in his small audience, armed with the latest facts circulating in circles where conversions are suspect. Why is it then, he asks, that the foundation set up by your business has given contributions to Planned Parenthood?
Forbes gets that look on his face that indicates he's only answered this question a hundred times before. The foundation is like the business, he says; it's controlled by his family, and he has siblings with whom he doesn't always agree on funding issues, including this one.
Forbes clearly considers his answer responsive and dispositive. But the right-to-lifer just as clearly is worried about trusting a presidential candidate with independent-minded siblings.
And then there's John McCain, who as far as I can tell is the only person in the race who has shown any evidence of thought on the issue. For two weeks, the Arizona senator and career-long opponent of abortion has been taking modest guff from the true-believers for suggesting care in advocating the junking of the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.
McCain said in an interview, as have Bush and Elizabeth Dole, that ''repeal'' is politically impossible for the foreseeable future. But McCain also said repeal might be a bad idea if it leads to state laws outlawing abortion that would drive it back to the dangerous underground of pre-1973.
When the guff came from the antiabortion orthodoxy that retains its vice-grip on his party, McCain pulled back at once. Now, in addition to affirming his 17-year record in Congress of voting pro-life, his sole signal of ''moderation'' is (like Bush and Dole) a refusal to commit to an antiabortion running mate or to ask Supreme Court possibilities how they would rule on Roe.
But when I asked him in Los Angeles recently what he thought could happen during an eight-year presidency, McCain didn't speak of ''repeal'' or of legislative fights. Instead, he spoke of a possibly changed climate in the country, especially if prosperity and economic security continued to spread. Even after getting burned some, McCain's first political instinct was to think of influencing the people who don't agree with him, as opposed to preening for those that do. They call that governance.
At the same time, however, McCain likes to say when campaigning that given his broad views on constitutional questions and on the Supreme Court, that he can't imagine picking a potential justice who shares those views. And that tends to undercut McCain's concerns about the prochoice majority in the country, because with the prospective retirement of three justices in the near future (two of them pro-Roe), a constitutional right to abortion services based on a constitutional right to privacy could easily be toast during a McCain presidency.
It's no different with George Bush. The justice he has picked out of the crowd to call his model is Antonin Scalia, the most relentlessly prolife of the current nine. Among the true believers on the right, Bush's antichoice views and his detailed, anti-choice record are regularly vouched for by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, and other leaders. The occasional barbs from competitors like Forbes, Gary Bauer, and Pat Buchanan are demonstrably inconsequential.
And more than Roe is involved. Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, there has been a steady chipping away at the right to choose, especially for poor and young women and teenagers. There is not one of these onerous, often mean-spirited policies - from banning public funds for the poor to regulating doctor-patient conversations, to mandated waiting period and exposure to government-written propaganda - that Bush or all the other candidates haven't supported.
The Reagan-Bush era was a time of gag rules, bans on disease-fighting research using fetal tissue and a Supreme Court that just 10 years ago was on a clear path to junking Roe. But for Bill Clinton's election, it probably would have happened.
Now, all those stakes will return. The fact is that all abortion views in the Republican contest must be written on litmus paper, and all the candidates know they must pass. They already have.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
