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Abortion remains potent issue in 6th District, as NARAL voices neutrality

In the contest between Democrats Doug Pike and Manan Trivedi, the issue of abortion just won’t go away. The two candidates in the 6th Congressional District are battling for the votes of suburban Democratic women down to the wire before Tuesday’s primary. And in the process, things are staying very much heated.

The latest flare up came when the prominent group NARAL Pro-Choice issued a statement Friday clarifying that it has not endorsed either candidate, and that neither candidate has been given a formal rating. The public reason for the statement was simply to clear up confusion. But interviews later indicated the group was clearly pushing back against Pike, who has a campaign mailer which claims the former Inquirer editorial writer “has a 100% pro-choice rating” from the group. NARAL doesn’t formally give percentage ratings to candidates, only to incumbents. Efforts to clear up the misunderstanding through back-channels proved unsuccessful.

“It’s a little frustrating that it has been made to seem that one candidate is being favored over another, when in fact that’s not the position of NARAL,” Elizabeth Shipp, the group’s political director, told pa2010.com. “We tried to resolve it. I think we have a disagreement of opinion about how this is being used.”

The organization considers both candidates to be “fully pro-choice,” Shipp said. And despite the fact that the candidates agree mostly if not entirely on the issue, it has been a contentious one since late last year, when Pike wrote a pa2010.com op-ed in which he described himself the only “publicly pro-choice” candidate in the race. That led to a heated exchange with the Trivedi campaign, which brought up Pike’s 1990 newspaper column supporting a state lawmaker who he described as a “zealous opponent of abortion.” Pike wrote at the time that “I support a woman’s right to an abortion,” but that the lawmaker’s “leadership and independence on other issues are more important than his crusade against the right to an abortion.”

More recently, the National Organization for Women endorsed Trivedi, and a former NARAL president cited that column and other writings in saying that “I as a woman would not trust that he understands and respects the fundamental rights of women in a way that will result in his standing for and protecting those rights.”

In a statement, Pike campaign manager Andrew Eldredge-Martin said the campaign had received a letter from NARAL that said Pike’s questionnaire “received a fully pro-choice rating” from the group, which led to the campaign mailing.

“We have never claimed that Doug was endorsed by NARAL,” Eldredge-Martin said, “so we have no problem with NARAL’s statement reiterating that no candidate has been endorsed. Doug hopes to win the endorsement of NARAL in the future.”

Trivedi, a Reading doctor, has done plenty to keep the issue alive. A direct-mail piece from the campaign says bluntly that “Doug Pike Degrades Democratic Women,” and goes on to reference the same newspaper column passages that were cited by Kate Michelman, the former NARAL president who also endorsed Trivedi. The Pike campaign has said those passages were taken out of context, but also said Pike “regrets it and apologizes.”

NARAL’s statement was also partly a response to confusion created by Michaelman’s endorsement of Trivedi, but the group was more concerned with Pike’s mailer.

“What is disappointing is Manan Trivedi’s attempts to mislead Democrats by using out-of-context newspaper columns from two decades ago to imply that Doug isn’t pro-choice,” Eldredge-Martin said, “when Doug’s writing actually shows a decades-long commitment to Democratic values and women’s rights, including a woman’s right to choose.”

In a statement, Trivedi campaign manager Ed Niles said that Pike’s past writings are fair game because he is running on that record.

“As promised, Manan Trivedi has and will continue to run an honest and truthful campaign on issues that are important to voters in the district,” Niles said, “but when Doug Pike decides to run on his written record as a journalist we feel it is important that voters have a chance to look at his full record, rather than the convenient quotes and anecdotes Doug provides. Leaders on women’s issues like Kate Michelman … and groups like the National Organization for Women have looked at the records of both candidates and they have decided to endorse Dr. Trivedi.”

May 15, 2010 at 6:06 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Doug Pike, Jim Gerlach, Manan Trivedi, PA-6

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