Senate Rejects Funds for Abortions in Rape, Incest

Under strong pressure from the Reagan Administration and the House, the Senate on Tuesday removed from a major funding bill a provision it had approved two months ago that would have allowed Medicaid-funded abortions for poor women who are victims of rape or incest.

On a 47-43 vote, the Senate instead reaffirmed current federal law, which permits the government to pay for abortions only when a mother’s life is in danger.

The more liberal abortion provision was originally part of a $140-billion Health and Human Services appropriations bill that included funds for AIDS and cancer research. It would have overturned a federal ban on such abortions that had been in force since 1981.

Veto Threatened

However, President Reagan had threatened to veto the bill if it contained the controversial abortion provision. And the House voted, 216 to 166, last week to reject the Senate’s abortion amendment. Faced with this opposition, the Senate cut the abortion proposal and sent the newly amended bill to Reagan, who is expected to sign it into law.

“These were strong signals and we have to face political realities,” said Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.), who voted for the amendment proposed by Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.) two months ago but opposed it Tuesday. He said that Congress could not muster the votes to override a Reagan veto and that it would have been foolhardy to jeopardize the larger bill.

Beyond AIDS and cancer research, the legislation contained funds for job training, the National Institutes of Health, the homeless, projects on alcohol and drug abuse and mental health, childhood immunization and a myriad of education programs.

Chiles’ argument swayed several pro-choice senators, including Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who reversed their previous votes on the abortion measure. The defeat of Exon’s amendment “was painful, but we had no alternative,” a Cranston spokesman said. However, California’s other senator, Republican Pete Wilson, voted to keep the controversial abortion measure in the bill.

In July, when the Senate voted, 73 to 19, for Exon’s amendment, many anti-abortion senators supported the amendment. On Tuesday, several of them said they had done so only because it was offered in place of more liberal language that had been recommended by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Inability to Pay Cited

During an often acerbic debate, sponsors said the Exon amendment was a matter of conscience. They contended that current Medicaid restrictions unfairly penalize poor women, who usually cannot afford to pay for abortions.

“It’s stand-up-and-be-counted time,” Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.) said. “None of us can imagine the horrors of rape or incest, certainly not the male members of this body. We’re not talking about some isolated principle. We’re talking about the rights of poor women to enjoy the same legal protections as anybody else.”

Weicker also contended that the more liberal language would not lead to an avalanche of new abortions. In 1979, the last year the government collected statistics for such Medicaid procedures, there were only 79 abortions in cases of rape or incest, he noted.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) related the story of a 13-year-old girl in her state who had cerebral palsy and became pregnant after being raped. The baby died shortly after birth, and the young mother should never have been put through such trauma, she said.

‘How Can We Deny Them?’

“Do you know how difficult it is to explain what was happening to such a child?” Mikulski asked. “The lives of the poor are brutal enough. . . . How can we deny them such justice?”

But opponents countered that violent sexual crimes against women or minors do not justify abortion, which they equated with murder.

“Is a child conceived through rape or incest any less of a human being?” Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) said. “Nobody is denying that these are terrible crimes, but that does not justify taking a life, which is what abortion is.”

Humphrey’s Comments

Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.) stressed that a vote against Exon’s amendment would not overturn the nation’s existing abortion laws. The issue, he said, was that taxpayers should not have to pay for such procedures.

Others predicted that Exon’s amendment, which would have required victims of rape or incest to report the crimes promptly, would open the floodgates to spurious claims.

“People say not too many (women) would lie about being raped,” Nickles said. “Well, I think a lot of people would lie. Lots of people will lie.”