Pro-Choice Vote by American Bar Assn. : Women’s rights: Resolution, passed 238-106, puts lawyers group on record for first time.

After an intense debate in which several delegates threatened to resign, the American Bar Assn. went on record for the first time Tuesday in support of a woman’s constitutional right to choose abortion.

The nation’s largest and most influential legal organization “opposes legislation or other governmental action that interferes with the confidential relationship between a pregnant woman and her physician or with the decision to terminate the pregnancy at any time before the fetus is capable of independent life,” according to a resolution passed by delegates at the ABA’s midwinter meeting in Los Angeles.

The measure was approved 238 to 106, after several motions to defer action were narrowly defeated.

Abortion rights advocates hope the ABA stand will have an impact on lawmakers in a number of states where new restrictions on abortion are being debated. But it was unclear whether ABA officials will actively lobby against anti-abortion measures in Washington or in state capitals.

Both ABA President L. Stanley Chauvin and President-elect Jack Curtin strongly opposed the resolution during the debate Tuesday.

Chauvin questioned whether the ABA should take sides on such a deeply divisive issue. After the vote, he said he would speak up in favor of a woman’s right to choose an abortion but only if asked.

“We have a policy now and we have to go with it, even if I wasn’t in support of it,” Chauvin said.

Curtin, who takes office in August, said he opposes abortion for moral and religious reasons and vowed not to sign his name to any friend-of-the-court brief or policy position in support of abortion rights.

Despite the vote Tuesday, Curtin said he is not ready to accept the pro-choice policy on abortion. “I think this (fight) is going to continue. I want to take it to the full assembly in Chicago,” when the ABA meets next in August, said Curtin, a Boston lawyer.

Delegates representing the 50 states attended Tuesday’s meeting. The organization’s membership totals more than 365,000.

Curtin said he wants another vote by the more than 10,000 members expected to attend the annual meeting.

Though it was 17 years ago that the Supreme Court declared in Roe versus Wade that women have a constitutional right to abortion, the ABA had avoided taking a stand on the issue. Some blamed this on the male-dominated and conservative bent of the ABA, while others said the organization had no reason to take a stand on an issue that had been settled by the Supreme Court.

But as support for Roe has eroded within the Supreme Court and now appears to hang on the votes of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, abortion rights advocates within the ABA sought to have the lawyers’ group take a public position.

Tuesday’s meeting demonstrated again that the abortion issue provokes debate. It also showed that supporters and opponents of abortion are hard to typecast. Women and men, both young and old, spoke heatedly on both sides of the issue.

Richard M. Coleman, a former president of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn., said the abortion rights policy deeply offends people who believe that human life begins at conception. “This (policy) will require Catholics to resign” from the ABA, he said.

Rosa Cumare, another Los Angeles lawyer, took the same position in speaking to the delegates. “Personally, I believe I have no other choice but to resign,” she said after the vote.

But J. Michael McWilliams, a Baltimore lawyer and former chairman of the ABA House of Delegates, said the ABA is not going on record in support of abortion. “This (resolution) says only that a woman should be able to make the decision. It says she will not be told what to do by some government.”