It’s great fun to taunt social conservatives with the fact that the Republican front-runner is “pro-choice” and “supports abortion rights.” But we’re getting to the point where claiming so much is just, well, not factual. “Pro-choice” politicians don’t “reassure” Sam Brownback that they’ll appoint “strict constructionist” justices to the Supreme Court following the model of John Roberts, as Giuliani did yesterday, according to Politico‘s Jonathan Martin.

Rudy simply isn’t planning on governing as an abortion-rights supporter. So instead of blithely asserting that we’re going to marginalize the theocrats by moving into a period in which abortion will become apolitical, we should call it like it is: Giuliani has become anti-choice, and the only way to protect and expand reproductive rights at the federal level is to elect a Democrat to the White House.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.