Adele M. Stan is a regular contributor to IntellectualCapital.com. She is the Washington correspondent for Working Woman magazine.

For the leadership of the Republican Party, June 2000 was a month of shattered illusions. Despite all the cheerful rhetoric about their all-but-certain presidential candidate, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, as "a uniter, not a divider," when it comes to the question of abortion, there is just no compromise to be had. As the party of Lincoln prepares to gather in Philadelphia next month for its national convention, the promise of a placid week stands on uncertain legs.

Until recently, both sides in the party's long-standing dispute over the "Human Life" plank of its platform, which states the GOP's opposition to legal abortion even in instances of rape or incest, had played it rather cool. The party leadership sought to forestall a public row on the issue by deciding not to have public platform hearings this year. In an apparent effort to defuse any potential accusations of ideological totalitarianism, Platform Committee Chairman Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin organized two late-June forums. At the Dayton, Ohio, and Billings, Mont., forums, local activists could participate in a public airing of the issue during a quiet week and in relatively quiet towns outside of the major media markets.

The court calls the question

Will abortion divide the Republican party?

Though tensions concerning the party's abortion stance are inevitable, Thompson's ruse appeared to be working rather well until, in the last week of June, the U.S. Supreme Court cast a bright light on the issue in its decision to reject Nebraska's law prohibiting "partial-birth" abortion as unconstitutional. The rub in the court's ruling lay less in the actual decision than in the one-vote margin by which it was taken, and even more so in the vitriolic tone of the dissenting opinions written by Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Both of those justices questioned the validity of Roe v. Wade, the case that legalized abortion in 1973. Suddenly, the stakes of this year's presidential race came sharply into focus. The court is so deeply divided that the replacement of a single justice on the current court by the next president could result in the overturning of the 27-year-old decision that delivered women from the tyranny of state control over their bodies.

Even before the high court's most recent decision, Bush had sought to quell any potential storm within his party over the issue by making conciliatory noises at the moderate Republicans whose votes he must win if he is to emerge victorious from Election 2000. First, he promised that he would impose no anti-abortion litmus test on any justices he would nominate to the court, except to say that he would favor "strict constructionists" -- a term that has become right-wing newspeak for anti-abortion, anti-gun-control judges. Still, when pressed to name his favorite justices on the current court, Bush expressed his admiration for Thomas and Scalia.

All along, Bush has held out the bait of a potential pro-choice running mate; the most frequently touted name is that of Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. However, whatever help Bush might get from a pro-abortion rights vice presidential candidate among the public at large, such a choice may do little to quash the bickering within his own party. Susan Cullman, co-chair of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition, has made it clear that a pro-abortion rights running mate will not, among her allies, stand as a substitute for the elimination of the Human Life plank from the GOP platform.

"I'd be very happy to have a Tom Ridge on the ticket. That would be terrific," Cullman told me in a recent interview. "But that's irrelevant to what happens to the platform. The platform governs election cycles for the next four years. It is our statement as a party. ... And right now we have a litmus test, and we'd like to get rid of that." Be the veep candidate either pro- or anti-abortion rights, says Cullman, "we will not be appeased if the platform stays the same. Absolutely not. I mean, how can you be happy that a party is doing something that totally undercuts your own rights?"

Focus on the family feud

At the opposite end of the spectrum sits Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, with a media empire that claims some 200 million conservative Christian radio listeners around the world. With Rev. Pat Robertson's influence tempered by his Christian Coalition's recent setbacks at the hands of the IRS, Dobson has become the man to see in the religious right, and he is firing a warning shot across the bow of the U.S.S. Bush on the running-mate issue. When Bush "implies that he can easily appoint a pro-choice running mate," Dobson told Sam Donaldson on ABC'S "This Week," "what are we to assume if the very first decision that he makes contradicts what he implies by [his] promise to appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court?" In other words, Dobson is hip to Bush's jive, and he is not buying it.

Should the Bush forces tamper with any aspect of the GOP's anti-abortion stance, Dobson predicted, conservative Christians, in numbers sufficient enough to alter the outcome of the general election, will sit on their hands come November. "I am warning him on the abortion issue," Dobson continued. "That's the central issue before us. That's the most significant moral issue of our time. We are the bloodiest nation in history. Forty million babies have died." Abortion is "not negotiable," Dobson added.

What is negotiable

In 1996, while the Republicans convened in San Diego's convention center, I stood watch at a Christian Coalition rally. There Ralph Reed -- then the coalition's executive director, now an adviser to the Bush campaign -- waved a copy of the document from the podium and declared to his troops, "This is your platform!" Indeed, under the direction of 1996 platform committee chairman Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the religious right was given full reign over the Republican Party platform, leaving poor old Bob Dole to run on a document he claimed not to have read. And no wonder candidate Dole trembled at the thought of cracking its cover; in addition to the Human Life plank, it called for the abolishment of the Department of Education, the prohibition of Senate ratification of important international treaties and for maintaining the ban on gays in the military.

The right won the platform fight four years ago because of Pat Buchanan's triumph in the New Hampshire primary, and the militia of convention delegates who came his way in subsequent primary races. In order to avert a noisy walkout at the convention by the Buchanan brigades, party leaders allowed Buchanan's team to author the platform. This year, with Buchanan gone from the party and the Christian Coalition in a waning cycle, the right stands to hold less sway over the platform as a whole. But, says Cullman, right-wing forces still will have a large say in how the abortion issue is handled, though less influence on "other issues." One way to interpret Cullman's statement is to suggest that, in order to win the support of conservative Christians in the general election, Bush and GOP leaders may be expected to let the right hang onto control of the party's abortion policy in exchange for reforming past statements on issues such as international treaties and education.

All indications point that direction. As to whether or not the 1996 language on abortion will remain in the platform, Thompson says, "I hope that it is, but I'm not sure that it will be." If the committee chairman hopes enough for it, the language most likely will remain. But Thompson has also called for the creation of a fresh, new document, which would indicate that he hopes for change in other areas. Watch especially for a new plank on women's health issues, which will likely attempt to offset the brouhaha that will result if the Human Life plank is retained.

The floor-fight scenario

While Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson has predicted no floor fight on the abortion issue, Thompson has indicated that he is less certain of that prospect. In 1996, Cullman's forces nearly pulled off a floor fight, which requires the combined efforts of six delegations, until, at the very last minute, pro-choice New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman asked her state's delegates not to join the fight. Cullman still will not say whether a floor fight is a real possibility at the upcoming convention, largely because the delegate lists have yet to be finalized. Until those lists are completed, no one really knows what ratio of right-wingers to moderates will represent their states on the convention floor.

Even a majority of pro-choice delegates within six state delegations fails to promise a convention dust-up, as learned in the lesson of '96. Within the Republican pro-choice faction, differences exist as to how best to handle the abortion dilemma. Whitman once again is signaling her reticence about making a stink, though she is arguing for a pro-choice running mate. This weekend she told Sam Donaldson: "[T]he platform does not determine how a candidate runs a campaign or how an office holder conducts their business. ¿ It is something that's been there over the years to allow the members of a party to have a say, but it is not central to how campaigns are run." (How's that for a statement of principle?)

In his zeal to unite his party behind him, Bush runs the risk of alienating several important factions by trying to appease all while being true to none. The irony of Bush's troubles with the right lies in his own record in Texas as a notably anti-abortion governor. Yet, if he gives into his natural constituency, his motto of "compassionate conservatism" will ring hollow. It is hard to see how he can emerge unscathed next month from the City of Brotherly Love.