Democrats, Led by Brown, Vote With GOP on Abortion

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown led a minority group of Democrats in voting with Republicans on Wednesday to defeat a pro-choice abortion amendment that the majority of his party wanted added to the state budget.

“Nobody--no special-interest group--dictates the conduct in my house,” said Brown, referring to pro-choice advocates who had urged other Democrats to back an amendment that would have added $14.8 million to the state budget to finance abortions for poor women under the Medi-Cal program.

The question of whether the state will finance abortions for poor women overshadowed the Democrats’ unveiling of their proposals for the next state budget. They have proposed a $39.8-billion fiscal plan that would add $500 million over the levels recommended by Gov. George Deukmejian.

The Speaker brought the new budget proposal up for a vote Wednesday anticipating a series of Republican amendments. But it was the Democrat-backed abortion amendment, introduced by Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles), that blocked action on the spending plan.

After sometimes heated debate and closed-door meetings by both Republicans and Democrats, the amendment was rejected when the Assembly voted 50 to 25 to table it. Brown and 16 other Democrats voted with 33 Republicans to shelve the amendment. Those voting for the amendment were 24 Democrats and one Republican, Assemblyman Charles W. Quackenbush of Saratoga.

No Further Budget Action

The Assembly then adjourned without taking further action on the budget.

Several hours after the vote, Brown was still fuming. He said he “resented” the action by other Democrats. The Speaker disclosed that Assembly Democrats had debated the issue behind closed doors for two days. While Brown would characterize the sessions only as “informative,” another participant said the issue had caused bitter divisions among some Democrats.

For the last several years, the budget has contained provisions to restrict abortions to women except in cases when pregnancies result from rape or incest, endanger the life of the mother or would result in a malformed fetus.

The Speaker frequently has said publicly that he believes women alone--and not the state--have the right to decide whether to undergo an abortion. But he has supported the anti-abortion language as a compromise to get the budget enacted.

Republicans, in 1980, held up passage of the budget for a record 16 days after the start of the July 1 fiscal year in protest over the use of state money to finance abortions.

Democrats, until this year, routinely went along with the compromise budget language because either an appellate court or the state Supreme Court--then headed by Rose Elizabeth Bird--always would strike down the restrictions as illegal.

But Bird was ousted from office by the voters last November, and a majority of the state Supreme Court consists of appointees of Deukmejian, a Republican. Democrats fear the new court will rule that the Legislature has the right to restrict abortions and decide how taxpayers’ money will be spent.

‘Ballgame Has Changed’

“The ballgame has changed this year with the new court,” Margolin said.

Margolin conceded that he pushed the abortion issue to a vote primarily to force lawmakers to make their positions known publicly.

That infuriated Brown.

“This issue has been resolved in the budget. It is the same language that has been in the budget for the last several years,” he told a reporter after a speech to the California Medical Assn. “Somebody wanted to play political games and political games only. They wanted to determine what their strength is. It’s improper to use my house to do that, and I resent it.”

The Assembly version of the budget, as it stands now, includes major new spending proposals for health, safety and education programs that were added during three extraordinary “committee of the whole” hearings.

Added back to the budget were $150 million in Deukmejian-proposed cuts in the Medi-Cal program, $8 million to fully restore state funding of Cal/OSHA, the state job safety agency, and $348.6 million in education spending.

Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said the budget is based on an assumption that state revenues will be $500 million higher than the amounts Deukmejian projected in the budget he introduced last January.

The Department of Finance basically is in agreement that revenues will be higher by about $500 million, but it has warned that bigger than anticipated health and welfare costs may eat up most of the unanticipated tax receipts.

Vasconcellos said the new revenue assumptions allowed lawmakers to add an additional $500 million in spending while at the same time creating a budget reserve of about $1 billion. Deukmejian is insisting on the reserve as insurance against unexpected expenditures or a downturn in the economy that could cause a dip in tax receipts.