Congress to Test Bush on Abortion in Divisive Battles : Politics: The President is expected to prevail by using his veto. But the emotional confrontations are certain to affect the 1992 election campaigns.

Congress is preparing to challenge President Bush on abortion-related issues in a series of emotional, divisive battles that are certain to have a fallout on 1992 election campaigns.

The future of fetal-tissue research, funds for United Nations birth control programs, abortions in military hospitals overseas and the right of federally funded family clinics to counsel patients about abortions will be at stake this year.

Bush, wielding his powerful veto weapon, appears likely to prevail in the summer-long showdowns because his congressional opponents acknowledge they lack the required two-thirds majorities in the Senate and House to override his objections.

The challengers, however, expect to dramatize their deep differences with the President and demonstrate that a solid majority in both houses now favors relaxing the federal restrictions on abortion that Bush has sworn to preserve.

Abortion-rights advocates have predicted that the outcome will be a new voter backlash against Bush’s policies that will expand their own ranks in Congress and eventually build a veto-proof majority on the controversial issues.

Anti-abortion forces, however, reject the idea of a major political impact from the verbal combat on Capitol Hill and contend that a clear majority of Americans still opposes abortions as a method of birth control.

Activists on both sides say members of Congress will be held accountable for their votes on the controversial issues in the 1992 elections.

At least one leading public opinion pollster believes the climate has changed because there is widespread apprehension that the Supreme Court will reverse its landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that held that abortion is a constitutional right.

“This is a gut issue,” says pollster Lou Harris. “It’s my judgment this could turn the young people completely around.”

The political climate in Congress began to change after 1989, when the Supreme Court in the Webster case allowed states to place significant restrictions on abortion. The next year, for the first time, advocates of abortion rights were able to muster a House majority in favor of using federal funds for abortions in cases of rape or incest as well as when the mother’s life was endangered.

More recently, the House voted for the first time to scuttle the Bush Administration’s policy of denying federal funds to private family planning groups that encourage abortions even though there is a flat ban against using federal funds for abortions. It was a clear defeat for Bush and his anti-abortion allies.

This year’s first big test in Congress will come later this month on the Supreme Court’s ruling last May 23 that upheld a Bush Administration regulation that denies federal funds to family planning clinics if they tell pregnant women that abortion is a legal option.

Opponents have denounced the rule as an outrageous interference in the doctor-patient relationship, depriving low-income women of full medical advice that would be available to women with private doctors.

If the rule remains in effect, opponents have argued, many family planning clinics will refuse federal funds and shut down rather than limit the advice they give to patients coming to them with unwanted pregnancies.

Defenders of the regulation have argued that it properly creates a “wall of separation” between family planning services and abortions, which cannot be paid for with federal funds.

Unlike many previous confrontations, however, major medical organizations have joined the fight against the Supreme Court ruling, and House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) has forecast a “very, very strong vote” against it, approaching a two-thirds majority needed to override a certain Bush veto.

James S. Todd, executive vice president of the American Medical Assn., favors scrapping the Bush-backed rule, saying such action “would keep the long arm of the federal government out of the physician-patient relationship.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also wants to eliminate the regulation. Richard H. Schwarz, president of the group, says: “If today the state can limit the right of a woman and her doctor to discuss abortion, will the government also have the right to prohibit health professionals from discussing or providing contraceptive services?”

Foley predicts that the House would vote to overturn the Supreme Court decision. “There is a very strong view here that this is not an issue of choice or so-called pro-life issues,” he says, “but it is an issue of freedom of speech, of medical practice, or a regulation that has serious consequences in interfering with the opportunity of medical counselors and others to speak freely.”

The National Right to Life Committee, however, argues that the rule is needed to make sure that federal funds under the program are spent on contraception and not to promote abortion.

“When it comes down to it, this isn’t about free speech or women’s rights,” says Camilla Hersh, a committee spokeswoman. “It’s really about money. Abortion is a big business.”

Another supporter of the Supreme Court ruling, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), says: “The question here is, ‘Are we going to use federal funds for something a significant portion of the population thinks is morally and legally wrong?’ ”

Planned Parenthood has mounted what it calls its most intensive political action campaign since its founding 75 years ago in hopes of persuading a veto-proof majority in Congress to overturn the so-called “gag-rule” decision. Faye Wattleton, president of the organization, has said new poll results indicate that lawmakers who support the rule “will do so at considerable risk to their political future.”

Yet Bush refuses to budge, and overcoming his veto will be a formidable task. In a June 4 letter to House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), the President referred to the pending bills on a series of abortion-related issues and declared: “I will veto any legislation that weakens current law or existing regulations.”

This would include a bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee to lift an Administration ban on research using tissue from aborted fetuses. Although two advisory panels at the National Institutes of Health said that such research could be conducted ethically, opponents in Congress say this type of research would encourage women to have abortions.

In voting this year to allow service women and military dependents to have abortions at their own expense in overseas military hospitals, the House effectively endorsed the Roe vs. Wade abortion-on-request ruling for a limited category of women. Bush’s veto threat would extend to this bill as well.

This surprise victory, however, has encouraged supporters of a bill that would allow women to choose whether to have an abortion--codifying the Roe decision. Tests of strength in the House have indicated that this bill might get a majority next year, and it would draw a clear line between Congress and Bush on the deeply emotional issue.