Candidates for governor trade jabs over abortion

The battle for socially conservative voters in New Jersey's Republican gubernatorial primary campaign came down yesterday to when former U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie changed his mind about abortion.

Opponent Steve Lonegan's campaign contends that Christie's campaign has misstated the timing of his change of heart from supporting abortion rights to opposing abortion.

Christie said yesterday that he changed his mind in a doctor's office in 1995 after hearing the beating heart of his second child, then a 13-week-old fetus.

"I left the doctor's appointment thinking to myself: 'A week earlier, I would have said that wasn't a life.' That's when my position changed," he said.

The Lonegan campaign distributed copies of a 1996 Newark Star-Ledger story about Christie cosponsoring a resolution to ban partial-birth abortions. It characterized Christie as favoring abortion rights.

However, Christie said yesterday that when he changed his position on abortion, he made no public announcement. He said that when he ran for reelection as a Morris County freeholder in 1997, a county right-to-life coalition supported him.