ABC News says John McCain is backing away from a pledge to moderate the GOP’s platform position on abortion, as extreme social conservatives rattle their sabres.

McCain is on record stating that he’d like the platform to include exceptions for rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother, and the social cons are vehemently opposed.

“There’s a process in place for the delegates to work on the platform and we are going to let that process work itself out,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told ABC News. …

“If he were to change the party platform,” to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother’s life, “I think that would be political suicide,” Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, told ABC News in May. “I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble.”

While leaving the platform untouched would please many in the GOP’s socially conservative base, it could alienate some of the more moderate voters that McCain is hoping to attract.

“If he doesn’t change the platform, then he’s being the same kind of hypocrite that he accused Bush of being in 2000,” Jennifer Blei Stockman, the co-chairwoman of Republican Majority for Choice, told ABC News in May. “Many people think of him as a moderate,” she added. “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.”

(Hat tip: Our #1 Researcher Charles!)