Results Mixed on Abortion Front : Both Sides Post Some Wins, Some Losses Since High Court Decision

California feminists and conservatives traded punches all summer in a new, highly charged political environment triggered by a U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion.

So far, both sides have won important victories and suffered key defeats, and from all appearances it is a fight that has only just begun.

The stakes in the abortion rights battle were raised July 3, when the U.S. Supreme Court in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services left the right to abortion intact but opened the door for states to more strictly regulate the controversial procedure. The decision prompted activists on both extremes to reorganize and put new energy into a battle that had not flared since the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion in 1973.

The results in California have been mixed, perhaps reflecting what polls show is a confused electorate where a majority of people consider abortion to be murder but more than half also support a woman’s right to get an abortion.

In August, abortion rights advocates helped to nominate a pro-choice Republican in a conservative Southern California Assembly district and then persuaded two GOP members of the closely divided state Senate to abandon their long-held opposition to abortion.

Anti-abortion forces, meanwhile, prevailed on Gov. George Deukmejian to eliminate two-thirds of the state budget for family planning services, which Democrats and moderate Republicans were unable to restore. And Republicans staved off an attempt by pro-choice Democrats to change a proposed, anti-crime ballot initiative that feminists contend could endanger abortion rights in California.

“We have had some wins and some losses,” said Norma K. Clevenger, lobbyist for the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.

Among the losses, Clevenger counts the Legislature’s failure to restore $24 million that Deukmejian cut in July from the family planning budget, money that was going not only for contraceptives but also for examinations to detect cancer, the AIDS virus and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Deukmejian cut the funds after Republican lawmakers complained that the money was supporting private agencies such as Planned Parenthood that also perform abortions.

The cut is expected to lead to the closure of many of the clinics run by 184 family planning agencies around the state. More than 80 Los Angeles-area clinics have already absorbed a 32% budget cut.

An effort to restore the money died on the final night of the 1989 legislative session with the collapse of a proposed deal to give the governor a prison labor plan he wanted in exchange for Deukmejian’s approval of family planning money on terms acceptable to Planned Parenthood.

Although many lawmakers doubted that Deukmejian would accept such a deal, Democrats, under pressure from organized labor to kill the prison labor proposal, never even considered approving such a trade.

“Members who believed that the prison labor bill would sell out working people were put in an impossible position that no one should be in,” Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) said. “I don’t think working people in this state or women should be in the position of having their vital needs traded off against each other.”

But Brian Johnston, Western director of the National Right to Life Committee, said the Legislature’s inability to restore the money reflected the will of Californians, who he said do not want their tax money to be used for family planning services that include abortion referrals.

“Polls show that people don’t want their money spent in that manner,” Johnston said. “We are very pleased that the message is getting out.”

Anti-abortion forces also have gained the edge so far in a battle between Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson and Democratic Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp. The two candidates for governor have sparred over an anti-crime initiative sponsored by Wilson that would make the right to privacy under the California Constitution no broader than it is under federal law. Van de Kamp says this change could reinvigorate criminal abortion statutes that have been thought obsolete under court rulings made in the mid-1970s.

Two Democratic lawmakers tried earlier this month to move an alternative ballot measure containing all of Wilson’s provisions but clarifying the privacy issue. Republicans refused to waive legislative rules to allow the matter to be heard--effectively killing it for the year.

On the other side of the ledger, pro-choice proponents claim partial credit for Tricia Hunter’s victory in a special election primary to fill the 76th Assembly District seat, which stretches from Riverside County through San Diego County almost to the Mexican border. Hunter, a registered nurse from Bonita, won the Republican nomination under rules that allow Democrats to cross over and vote for Republicans in special elections.

Hunter is expected to defeat Democrat Jeannine Correia in an Oct. 3 runoff in the heavily Republican district. But the result could be complicated by the write-in campaign of a third candidate, Republican Dick Lyles, who has the support of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

Robin Schneider, director of the Southern California Abortion Rights League, said Hunter’s success is part of the same phenomenon that prompted the recent conversions of two Republican state senators--Ed Davis of Valencia and John Seymour of Anaheim---who abandoned anti-abortion stands and announced that they will vote to use taxpayers’ dollars to fund abortions for poor women. Before Davis and Seymour switched, only one GOP senator supported public funding for abortions.

“This is very significant,” Schneider said. “The Senate has been our problem house.”

The change means that next year, pro-choice groups should be able to block the inclusion of language in the state budget restricting abortions performed under the Medi-Cal program. Although state courts have thrown out the restrictions every year for a decade, the abortion rights camp fears the new court dominated by Deukmejian appointees might soon reverse itself on the issue.

“If you are going to have abortions, you cannot deny poor women abortions simply because they are poor,” Seymour said, explaining his change of heart.

Seymour, who is a candidate for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, said he believes Californians “don’t believe in abortion.”

“But at the same time, they don’t believe that the government can tell a woman that she can’t make that choice,” he said.

Sen. John Doolittle (R-Rocklin), chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus and a staunch opponent of abortion, said he is “concerned” by the defections of Davis and Seymour.

“I really don’t know what to make of it,” Doolittle said, clearly chagrined. “I haven’t heard of anyone changing their position to pro-life lately.”

But Johnston of the Right to Life Committee said Seymour was responding to “ephemeral winds” that will die down once the public realizes that the “pro-choice” label really mean, in his words, “pro-abortion.”

“John Seymour is posturing himself,” Johnston said. “It indicates what is perceived as a political posture that would be advantageous. It remains to be seen to what degree it really will be advantageous.”