Bush to Veto Abortion Rights Expansion Move : Legislation: Angry Democrats vow to seek an override after an effort to compromise collapses.

President Bush will veto a multibillion-dollar funding bill that includes a provision to permit the use of federal money for abortion in cases involving rape and incest, the White House announced Tuesday.

House Democratic leaders immediately vowed to try to override a veto, and Bush’s decision drew a storm of criticism from members of Congress who favor abortion rights.

They called it “outrageous” and “immoral,” and one of them predicted that Bush was making “the political mistake of his career.”

“This is a fundamentally immoral decision,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento), who added that “we will continue this fight” into the coming year with an override vote and “every other chance we get.”

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that Bush had decided to veto the bill after efforts to work out a compromise collapsed Monday. “No blame. Just didn’t work out,” Fitzwater said, adding that “we talked to people on all sides of the issue . . . (but), in the end, just couldn’t find any flexibility.”

Bush was praised for “standing tall in the defense of preborn children” by Susan Smith, associate legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. She said that “tens of thousands of preborn children could lose their lives in tax-funded abortions” under the bill’s language.

Her committee will mount a national campaign to urge “pro-life Americans to insist that members of Congress back up the President” when they vote on the veto override, she added.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N. J.), an anti-abortionist, praised Bush for taking “a very principled, albeit very difficult, stand.” Doing right, he said, “isn’t always popular.”

But Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae), a sponsor of the bill’s abortion provision, called Bush’s decision “outrageous” and the “height of hypocrisy” in view of the fact that he supports the right of women who can afford to pay for abortions to have them in cases involving rape or incest.

“The President supports the right of well-off women to choose . . . but tells poor women: ‘I can’t help you. You have to twist in the wind,’ ” Boxer said.

Boxer said that abortion advocates stand ready to “mobilize their forces around the country and take this fight down to the wire.” She predicted that the President’s decision will be so unpopular with the American public that “it will come back to haunt him for the rest of his political career.”

That assessment was to some degree shared by some moderate Republicans, who said that they fear Bush’s veto will hurt Republican candidates in coming gubernatorial elections. “The Administration’s position is tremendously harmful to Republican candidates, particularly in the Northeast and in the West,” Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) said.

The abortion provision, reversing a 1981 ban on the use of Medicaid funds for abortions for the victims of rape and incest, was contained in a $156.7-billion funding bill for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. It was passed by the House last week in what was seen as an important, if symbolic, turnaround in the bitter battle between anti-abortion and abortion-rights forces.

Under current law, Medicaid funds may be used to pay for an abortion only if the mother’s life is endangered.

The bill, also approved by a House-Senate conference committee but still awaiting final Senate approval, cleared the House by a vote of 216 to 160--a margin too narrow to guarantee that abortion-rights advocates will be able to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.

Although House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) conceded that the provision’s supporters may not be able to override a veto, Boxer and other abortion-rights advocates said that they will insist on keeping the rape-and-incest language in the bill, raising the prospect of a long and bruising struggle with the Administration over an issue that Democratic strategists believe is finally winning their party popularity throughout the country.

As the battle lines were drawn Tuesday, advocates on both sides of the issue noted that the $156.7-billion bill is in danger of being thrown into limbo by the stalemate--a predicament that each side plans to blame on the other in an effort to extract concessions.

Assuming that a veto is sustained, several legislators said, the bill could be wrapped into a “continuing resolution,” along with two other money measures facing vetoes because of abortion language. But, if that happens, abortion-rights supporters say that they will insist on inserting the bill’s rape-and-incest language into the continuing resolution, hoping to force Bush to sign it as government agencies begin running out of money.

“We’re going to pursue this every step of the way. We’ll be going eyeball to eyeball,” said Ron Fitzsimmons, an aide to Rep. Les AuCoin (D-Ore.), an abortion rights advocate. “I don’t know if anyone knows how it will come out,” he added, “but at some point we’ll need a bill.”

Boxer insisted that abortion-rights advocates would not compromise on what she called “a matter of principle.” But other strategists on both sides of the issue suggested that there is still some room left for compromise after the veto--which can’t occur before Friday, the day the Senate is expected to give its final approval to the bill.

Conservatives will try to “work out something . . . that won’t give the right-to-life people heartburn and at the same time will allow the pro-choice groups to claim some progress,” Gary Bauer, a former policy adviser in the Ronald Reagan Administration, said.

One possible compromise that has been informally discussed would attach a reporting period to the bill that would permit Medicaid financing for abortions provided the rape or incest is “promptly reported” to health authorities. The two sides remain far apart on this, however, with the Administration said to be amenable to a 48-hour reporting period and the abortion-rights advocates favoring a 60-day limit.

In the meantime, both sides are gearing up for a public fight over the abortion provision.