Override of Bush Abortion Veto Seen as Unlikely

Abortion rights advocates conceded Sunday that they have little chance of overriding President Bush’s veto of a bill allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions for victims of rape or incest.

But pro-choice lawmakers and lobbyists said they still will put up a fight to override the veto of the $157-billion Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill.

“The outlook for an override is not good,” said Marcy Wilder, a staff attorney for the National Abortion Rights Action League, a pro-choice lobbying group.

Although the Senate approved the spending bill, including relaxation of the Medicaid abortion restrictions, last Thursday by a 67-31 vote, the House vote a week earlier was 216 to 206, far short of the two-thirds that would be needed to override the veto.

Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), a longtime leader of pro-choice forces in Congress, acknowledged that the prospects for an override in the House are slim, but he suggested that Congress keep passing the same appropriations bill.

If Republicans lose next month’s gubernatorial races to pro-choice Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, Packwood predicted, “you may see a chance in the House” to override a Bush abortion veto the second or third time around.

Packwood, interviewed on Cable News Network’s “Evans & Novak” show, said Republican lawmakers are shifting under pressure from constituents toward a more pro-choice stance.

Bush vetoed the measure Saturday at Camp David. He said he was unwilling to permit federal funding of abortions “other than those in which the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term.”