Anti-Abortionists Quietly Pursue Strategy on 2 Bills : Legislation: They hope to turn the tide against pro-choice advocates with measures designed to refocus public opinion in California.

With abortion rights advocates riding a wave of favorable public opinion in California, anti-abortion lobbyists and lawmakers are quietly devising a legislative strategy they hope will turn the tables and put the pro-choice side on the spot.

The opponents of abortion realize that a majority of Californians, asked in the abstract, favor a woman’s right to choose abortion. But they also know that public support for abortion rights begins to erode as soon as the discussion turns to the reasons women choose abortions and the consequences of the procedure.

So rather than seek a sweeping new law that would ban abortions or curtail them significantly, the anti-abortion groups plan to sponsor two bills this year that would do little to change the number of abortions performed but might do much to alter the public’s perception of the issue.

On Monday, as 500 pro-choice demonstrators rallied noisily on the Capitol steps, abortion opponents were working behind the scenes to formulate their legislative strategy.

One possible bill would prohibit abortions desired by parents unhappy with the sex of the fetus. The other would ban the use of tissue or organs from a deliberately aborted fetus for medical research and experimentation.

The idea behind the measures is to force abortion rights advocates to defend their beliefs that the fetus is not an unborn child or human life and that the government ought not to be telling women when they can or cannot end a pregnancy.

State Senate leader David A. Roberti, an anti-abortion Democrat from Los Angeles, said pro-choice lawmakers are overdue for the kind of moral grilling that so far only abortion opponents have had to face. In a recent interview, Roberti pointed out that legislators such as he who oppose abortion must wrestle uncomfortably with whether the procedure should be allowed in cases of rape or incest.

“There are tough questions that pro-abortion, pro-choice people should be called upon to address,” Roberti said. “Very little attention has been given to what you should do with late-term abortions, when you have a fully developed baby. What do you do in the case of a nurse who does not want to perform an abortion but might lose her job if she doesn’t take part? Should we use tax money for abortions? What about experimenting on fetal tissue, which is really experimenting on body parts?”

Janet Carroll, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee’s California affiliate, said she recognizes that a ban on sex-selection abortions could not be easily enforced. Women could always lie about their reasons for ending a pregnancy or go to a clinic where the doctors did not know why the abortion was being performed. What’s more, she said, such abortions probably account for only a tiny number of those performed each year.

“But that is not a reason not to (pass the legislation),” she said. “Public policy is a kind of teacher, and this policy could make that kind of abortion unacceptable. It would show people that abortions really do occur for these reasons and they are perfectly legal and acceptable under public policy today.”

Carroll also said that debate on such a bill would demonstrate vividly that most pro-choice legislators are out of step with the public at large because the lawmakers oppose any restrictions on abortion. In a recent nationwide poll by the Boston Globe, 93% of respondents said it should be illegal to use abortion as a tool for choosing the sex of a child.

Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Los Angeles), a leader in the pro-choice movement, said his side has no alternative but to frame the issue as a woman’s right to make private choices free of government intervention, even if it means defending the unpopular.

“I find the notion of abortion for sex selection to be offensive,” Friedman said. “But I believe once we pierce the separation between the government’s decision and the woman’s decision, we risk eroding our argument in other areas as well.”

The fight over the medical use of fetal tissue appears less clear-cut. Most people can imagine their own life or the life of a loved one being extended by a tissue transplant or research done on an aborted fetus. Friedman calls such a ban, which has already been instituted by President Bush on federally funded research, “despicable.”

“It is hypocritical in the extreme for anyone who calls themselves pro-life to fight the use of fetal tissues in research that can save lives,” he said.

Despite Friedman’s indignation, the proposal might be an effective way for abortion opponents to sway public opinion by humanizing the aborted fetus and portraying it as a victim. Polls tend to show that when people focus on the right of the mother, they support abortion rights, but when they focus on the fetus, they oppose abortion.

Carroll of the Right to Life Committee cites anecdotal cases of women who said they would like to get pregnant in order to use their offspring’s tissue for medical purposes. One wanted to transplant brain tissue into her father in an experiment on Alzheimer’s disease, and the other hoped to use her aborted child’s tissue to fight her own case of diabetes. Both examples would surely be used in any legislative debate on the issue.

“Many people are appalled at the thought that we are using tiny unborn children in experimentation,” she said.