LETTERS: GOLDWATER ABANDONED PRO-LIFE CAUSE

To the editor:

In response to Peter Kinder's tribute to Barry Goldwater on the occasion of the senator's death: I remember Goldwater well, The 1964 presidential election was the first in which I was able to vote. I remember having many lively discussions with my grandmother about who was the best man for the presidency. She was for Lyndon B. Johnson. I, being young and passionate, was for Barry Goldwater.

Goldwater was largely credited with championing conservative-libertarian themes of freedom. It is said that he ushered in a new wave of thinking in the Republican Party, replacing the Rockefeller pro-business Republicans with advocates of smaller government like Ronald Reagan and the current Republican congressional leadership. Yet in his later years his advocacy of rights and liberties left out one important cause which to many Republicans today hold dear: the right to life.

Barry Goldwater once supported the right to life. In 1980 he signed a statement in which he supported a human life amendment. He frequently voted against abortion during the 1970s. However, in the years preceding his death, he betrayed the right-to-life movement by his stunning support for abortion and candidates who supported abortion on demand.

Although he supported the right to life in the U.S. Senate in all of his prior terms, in his final term he betrayed the pro-life movement by taking an active stand in opposition to the pro-life platform of the Republican Party. He opined that the GOP would "go down in shambles" if an anti-abortion plank was adopted in the GOP platform.

The fact that the senator had a distinguished career in the military and in politics was tarnished, I feel, in the end by his betrayal of not only his own Republican Party, but also of all the little babies who have died since then.

CHRISTINE E. STEPHENS

Cape Girardeau