La. Governor Will Ponder Abortion Bill : Compromise Law Includes Exceptions for Rape, Incest

Gov. Buddy Roemer said today that he would not make an immediate decision on whether to sign or veto a compromise abortion bill hastily approved in the Legislature.

The Legislature passed the measure, which proponents said would ban 98% of the abortions performed in the state, Sunday night in a stunning reversal for anti-abortion forces who entered the day needing a near-miracle to override Roemer’s veto of a previous bill that made no exceptions for victims of rape and incest.

The new bill included the exceptions that Roemer had demanded, and he now has 20 days to sign or veto the bill. If he takes no action, it will become law in September without his signature.

He gave no timetable for signing or vetoing the new bill, which has some lawmakers questioning its constitutionality. The measure would become the nation’s toughest state anti-abortion law.

“Being told by the bulk of those (anti-abortion) representatives they could not tolerate my position, to have them flip-flop as they did yesterday was quite a shock,” Roemer said at a news conference today.

The new abortion bill, which passed as an amendment to a misdemeanor bill concerning flag-burning and included long prison sentences and stiff fines, imposed penalties that were too strict for anything short of a felony.

“There are several questions,” Roemer said. “Representatives of the attorney general’s office called . . . to say they’d like us not to act quickly either way until they had a chance to examine the constitutional question.”

He also said he was uncomfortable with the way the rape and incest exceptions were written. Under the bill, a woman would have seven days to report either crime and receive an abortion.

Roemer had wanted a 90-day period for those exceptions.

“Their (anti-abortion lawmakers) first pitch was 72 hours,” he said. “I thought that was just patently nonsense. I thought a more reasonable period of time would accommodate common sense and justice.”

The latest action on the bill began Sunday when the Senate tabled work on overriding Roemer’s veto of the earlier measure that banned all abortions except where a mother’s life was threatened by the pregnancy.

The House, just hours after Roemer’s veto on Friday, had voted to override that action. But the more liberal Senate on Saturday could not find the two-thirds majority needed to do the same.

But moments after the Senate tabled that measure, state Sen. John Saunders, a Democrat, stunned colleagues by asking them to amend an unrelated bill to reduce to $25 the penalty for beating people who desecrate the American flag with abortion language that included the rape and incest exceptions.

Saunders’s amendment stripped out all the flag language and substituted the compromise abortion language.