ROBERT CASEY

A vast abortion industry, generating some half a billion dollars annually, sprang into existence in the wake of Roe and Doe.

A 1990 Gallup poll found that 77 percent of Americans polled said abortion was the taking of human life. I agree, and believe that taking the life on an innocent child is unjust.

The national Democratic Party has embraced abortion on demand. I believe this position is wrong in principle and out of the mainstream of our party's historic commitment to protecting the powerless.

If our country is to reach a workable solution to the abortion issue, the Democratic party must be open to and tolerant of opposing views.

Abortion on demand, throughout the full nine months of a pregnancy, for virtually any reason, became public policy in the United States of America. No other developed democracy had, or has, such a permissive abortion regime.

I come to urge my party to be open to debate and discussion; to move away from a lock-step litmus test which advocates abortion on demand in an effort to reach a broader national consensus.

Today, the growing economic and social pressures in our country are putting millions of women, children and families at increased risk of abuse and neglect, especially when families are denied basic support services and economic opportunity.

Abortion is a question of choice.

We have had virtually unlimited access to abortion for nearly twenty years. Yet during that same period, more and more women and children have slipped into poverty.

Abortion is the ultimate violence.

Who belongs to the community of the commonly protected?

Tolerance is the price we pay for living in a free, pluralistic society.

I am fairly certain that my abortion position hurt me, because in a Democratic primary, where turnout is relatively low, liberal voters turn out in disproportionately large numbers and thus exercise a disproportionate influence on the outcome.

For almost twenty years, abortion policy in America has been controlled by the courts.

From the beginning, each human embryo has its own unique genetic identity.

As I discovered, even the governor of a major state who holds pro-life views can be denied a hearing at his party's convention without the national media protesting it.

Whose rights will we acknowledge? Whose human dignity will we respect? For whose well-being will we, as a people, assume responsibility?

Legal abortion will never rest easy on this nation's conscience.

Our moral, religious, and political traditions are united in their respect for the dignity of human life.

The abortion issue has intersected with my public life from the very beginning.

Advocates of unrestricted abortion do not want the public to focus on these undeniable facts of fetal development, but the facts cannot be ignored.

I am convinced that this approach, a mainstream Democratic approach, commands the strong support of the American people, and presents a sharp and compassionate contrast to the Republican abortion position which offers no real hope or commitment to mother or child.

To establish justice and to promote the general welfare, America does not need the abortion license.

We must make children and families a national priority.

The abortion license has not brought freedom and security to women. Rather, it has ushered in a new era of irresponsibility toward women and children, one that now begins before birth.