From ABC News:
While McCain has not addressed the abortion platform since becoming the presumed Republican nominee, he reaffirmed his desire to change the GOP's official abortion stance following a multicandidate forum that took place in Des Moines, Iowa, April 14, 2007.
Despite McCain's support for changing the platform in 2000 and 2007, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the co-chairman of McCain's Justice Advisory Committee, significantly downplays the possibility that McCain would revise the party's call for a nationwide constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions.
"I don't think that's going to happen. I think you're going to see a platform process that is going to maintain that plank," said Brownback, a leading abortion rights opponent who endorsed McCain after ending his own White House bid.
...
"If he doesn't change the platform, then he's being the same kind of hypocrite that he accused Bush of being in 2000," said Jennifer Blei Stockman, the co-chairwoman of Republican Majority for Choice. "To not accept abortion in cases of rape and incest, give me a break. That's sick. That's inhumane."
"And the life of the mother?" she added. "These are things that we can't even put our arms around because they are so inhumane."
...
Stockman said that McCain's team is ignoring his previous commitments on this issue and is intentionally downplaying his clout.
"If McCain chooses not to revise the platform, I think he will say it's 'the system' and he will try to distance himself from it," said Stockman. "But he absolutely has the power to change it."
"Many people think of him as a moderate," she said. "But when it comes out that he doesn't want to change this extreme, right-wing Republican platform, the word 'moderate' is going to disappear from any description of McCain."
