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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

(Newser) – 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?”

[Images (3)]

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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)

Colin Powell salutes the US Marine Corps Band as he goes to the podium during an event to commemorate Marian Anderson's performance 70 years ago, at the Lincoln Memorial, April 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

"That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders on the religious right," Barry Goldwater said. "It's not a conservative issue at all." (Getty Images)

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Not that long ago, we had pro-choicers like Barry Goldwater. Or Ronald Reagan, Act One. Or George H.W. Bush.
- Ellen Goodman

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Abortion 'Purity Test' Is New to Republicans