President Bush, who has not made a major issue of abortion during his first term, is aggressively using the issue against Sen. John Kerry, who supports abortion rights despite his assertion that life begins at conception.
In blistering ads on TV, radio and in newspapers, as well as through his campaign spokesmen, Mr. Bush, in recent days, has hammered the Massachusetts Democrat on multiple fronts in the abortion wars.
“Kerry voted against parental notification for teenage abortions,” says a radio ad released yesterday by the Bush campaign. “Taking control away from parents, taking away their right to know.
“And Kerry even voted to allow schools to hand out the morning-after pill without parents’ knowledge,” the spot continues.
The ad also lambastes Mr. Kerry for voting “against the Laci Peterson law — the law protecting pregnant women from violence.”
Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade dismissed the ad as one of several “sloganized, wedge issues dreamed up by Republicans to divide Americans for the purpose of political gain and distract from the administration’s failure to make America strong at home or more respected in the world.”
But Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said abortion is yet another issue that demonstrates the liberal views of Mr. Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
“There is broad support for the Laci Peterson law,” Mr. Stanzel said. “There is broad support for ending the abhorrent partial-birth abortion procedure, which both John Kerry and John Edwards oppose.”
With both the Bush and Kerry campaigns ratcheting up their rhetoric about “values” in recent days, the president’s strategists have paired abortion with another politically charged social issue — homosexual “marriage” — in an effort to place Democrats on the unpopular side of the culture wars.
Mr. Bush supports a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The amendment, which will be the subject of a Senate vote this week, is opposed by Mr. Kerry, who also voted against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, signed by President Clinton, which also defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
“This will just tell you how much trouble they’re in,” said Kerry strategist Tad Devine on “Fox News Sunday.” “You know, here we are in July. And they’re talking about partial-birth abortion, gay rights, you know, a very hot-button social agenda.
“And I’ll tell you why they’re talking about it: Because they’re in trouble, big trouble, and they know it.
“They’re in trouble with their own base,” he added. “And they’re trying to energize it.”
Bush strategists think Mr. Kerry, a Roman Catholic, is particularly vulnerable on the abortion issue. The Democrat caused a stir last week by announcing that he believes “life begins at conception.”
Republicans say that doesn’t square with Mr. Kerry’s vote against the Laci Peterson law, which made it a crime to commit violence against a child in the womb. Mr. Bush signed the law in a White House ceremony that was attended by relatives of Mrs. Peterson, a pregnant woman who was killed in 2002.
To capitalize on this apparent contradiction by Mr. Kerry, the Bush campaign last week began running a TV ad in 19 states that assails Mr. Kerry for voting against the Laci Peterson law.
“John Kerry says life begins at conception, but he’s not willing to take action on that legislatively,” Mr. Stanzel said.
The campaign also highlighted Mr. Kerry’s pro-choice stance in a full-page newspaper ad in West Virginia headlined “Got conservative values?” Modeled after the popular “Got milk?” ads, the effort was aimed at mocking Mr. Kerry’s recent assertion that he has conservative values.
The attack was broadened yesterday, when the radio ad hit Mr. Kerry for opposing parental notification of teenage abortions. Only 6 percent of U.S. Catholics support Mr. Kerry’s position, according to a poll this year by Zogby International.
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