The Nassau County executive, Thomas Suozzi, is being criticized by the abortion-rights lobby and praised by Bishop Murphy, who heads the Roman Catholic diocese on Long Island that includes Nassau, for his speech Tuesday at Adelphi University discussing what he called “common sense” and “common ground” approaches to reducing the incidences of abortion. Count us on Mr. Suozzi’s side.

Mr. Suozzi, a Democrat and a Catholic who favors keeping abortion legal, gave one of the most thoughtful speeches heard on this issue in a long time. “I do not want to make an argument about abortion; I want to make a difference in the number of abortions,” he said. He proposed to spend $400,000 a year to fund supportive group homes for single mothers and $200,000 a year to promote adoption. One in six pregnancies in Nassau County ends in an abortion, he said.

He argued that men are too often left out of the discussion: “Women are often unfairly judged regardless of the choices they make regarding an unplanned pregnancy, and men are often let off the hook. Women who choose abortion have their morality questioned. Women who choose to put a baby up for adoption have their maternal instincts questioned, and women who carry an unplanned pregnancy to full term when unmarried or financially insecure are often labeled irresponsible. In our culture, boys will be boys, men will be men, but women are too often and too readily judged.”

According to a text of the speech available at the Web site of Newsday, Mr. Suozzi spoke of “a culture that hypes ‘sex without consequences’ on TV, in movies, and in advertising 24 hours a day.” He said, “Parents should be able to adopt children without traveling halfway around the world.”

Here in New York City, as opposed to in the Long Island suburbs, the problem is of a different scale. There were 90,820 “induced terminations of pregnancy” in the city in 2003, according to the city health department, and 124,345 live births. By that rough measure, about 42% of all pregnancies in the city end in abortions – more than double the national average.

One does not have to resolve the abortion debate to suggest that it makes no sense to leave these women unaware of the possibilities of adoption or under pressure to have an abortion because they feel they are too poor to care for children on their own. As Mr. Suozzi put it, “Anyone who really wishes to reduce the number of abortions has an obligation to help those women who choose not to have an abortion yet find themselves alone.”

The decision to “end welfare as we know it” put an end to government subsidies that offered incentives for single parenthood. But it would be cruel indeed if an effort to stop incentivizing unwed motherhood had the consequence of encouraging poor pregnant women to have abortions.

As Mr. Suozzi suggested – and as President Clinton did with his formulation that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare – there’s a possibility for a consensus that reducing the number of abortions is desirable. That consensus can stretch even among those who disagree on whether the procedure itself is moral or should be legal. It’s a constructive direction in which to lead the public debate, and it’s an opportunity for a politician here in New York City who would be so bold as to follow Mr. Suozzi’s lead on the issue.