Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 18, 1991                   TAG: 9104180545
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

GOP CHAIRMAN OPPOSES ABORTION

The new party chairman, Clayton Yeutter, virtually assured a confrontation by saying on Wednesday that he supports the uncompromising anti-abortion provision currently in the GOP platform.

Republicans for Choice, a group headed by Alexandria, Va., mayoral candidate Ann Stone, is surveying the party's 1988 delegates to reaffirm what a television network exit poll found at that convention: 68 percent of them were pro-choice.

"We are simply asking the chairman and the president to allow the party to make this decision and that it not be an edict from on high," said Stone, a GOP consultant.

Stone said the anti-abortion language is hurting some Republicans and should be eliminated altogether. "I would like people to judge our candidates on this issue for where they really stand and not have them labeled automatically," she said.

Yeutter said Wednesday that he agrees with President Bush's anti-abortion position and "I see no reason for significant changes" in that or any other part of the 1988 platform.

The abortion section of the platform says an unborn child has a fundamental right to life. It supports a human life amendment to the Constitution and opposes the use of public funds for abortion.

The late Lee Atwater, Yeutter's predecessor, declared the GOP "a big tent" with room for diverse views on abortion shortly after the party's anti-abortion gubernatorial candidates were defeated in New Jersey and Virginia in 1989.