Republicans Stop Bid to Save Clinics : Politics: GOP assemblymen, angry at the diversion from earthquake relief bills, block emergency funds to keep family agencies from closing.

A last-ditch effort to provide emergency funds that would prevent the closure of family planning clinics throughout the state was blocked Saturday by Republican legislators who contend the clinics encourage abortions.

With 38 family planning clinics forced to shut down because of a cutback in state funds, Democratic leaders agreed to broaden the Legislature’s earthquake relief session and take up a $6-million bailout resolution for the clinics.

The Senate, on a bipartisan vote of 29 to 6, easily passed the measure asking Gov. George Deukmejian to forestall the clinic closures until the Legislature comes back in January and negotiates a permanent solution.

But Republicans in the Assembly, angry at the diversion from earthquake relief bills, refused to waive the Assembly’s rules so that the bailout measure could come up for a vote.

“I think it’s an inappropriate effort to leverage and blackjack members of the Legislature who are here because of this earthquake,” complained Assembly Republican Leader Ross Johnson of La Habra.

Johnson also charged that the family planning clinics promote abortions by providing pregnancy counseling along with other services.

Backers of the clinics counter that no state funds are used at such facilities to provide abortions or encourage women to get them.

Nevertheless, the fiery assemblyman also said he is becoming “less and less sympathetic” to family planning clinics because of the political activities of some groups, such as Planned Parenthood.

“If they’ve got enough money to take out ads to attack members of the Legislature, let them use that money,” he said.

The family planning crisis was prompted by Deukmejian’s veto in July of $24 million in state funds for clinics offering such services as birth control, gynecological exams, Pap smears, pregnancy counseling and testing for venereal diseases.

The governor said the family planning programs had been ineffective and should instead be funded by private sources, which already provide a large portion of their funding. His veto wiped out two-thirds of the state’s $36-million family planning budget.

Of the 38 clinics forced so far to halt family planning services, 13 are in Los Angeles County.

Kevin Brett, Deukmejian’s press secretary, said that if more money is needed to fund the clinics, counties can use other resources allocated by the state, such as revenue from the Proposition 99 tobacco tax increase, he said.

“The governor does not see a compelling reason why we need to act on family planning at this time,” Brett said. “We called the special session for earthquake relief and it is the desire of the governor to keep it to that subject.”

The drive to restore some of the family planning money was led by two Democratic legislators from Los Angeles, Assemblywoman Maxine Waters and Sen. Diane Watson.

For two days, Waters lobbied Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) to call a general session of the Legislature at the same time as the emergency earthquake relief session so that the issue could be heard.

Then, once she was successful, the Democrats introduced identical resolutions in both houses requesting that the governor spend $6 million from the state’s reserve fund to prevent the clinic closures. The resolutions, an attempt at compromise, would not have required the expenditure of funds but simply asked the governor to use his emergency powers to save the clinics.

In the Assembly, the bid to have the bill heard was rejected on a party line vote of 43 to 31, well short of the two-thirds vote required.

But Waters was not deterred by the outcome. With abortion looming as a major issue in the Legislature next year, she said Saturday’s debate was simply the first step.

“It’s what I call my opening salvo to wage a campaign in this Legislature on women’s issues,” she said. “This Legislature belongs to women too. What can be anticipated all of next year is that at every opportunity we’re going to force these issues.”