Senate OKs Revoking Ban on Clinic Abortion Counseling

The Senate approved legislation Thursday revoking a ban on abortion counseling by federally financed clinics and allowing taxpayer-paid abortions for women who are victims of rape or incest.

The measure, adopted 78 to 22, faces a veto threat from President Bush over both provisions.

With the President promising to reject the bill, abortion foes did little to prevent passage of the legislation. They have resorted to that tactic frequently in recent months, in a Congress that still lacks the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

“The President’s regulations . . . are not morally defensible,” Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) told reporters about the abortion-counseling ban backed by the Administration. “And that is why he has chosen not to defend them. Obviously, the White House strategy is not to have either a debate or a vote squarely on that issue. It is to obscure the issue.”

The abortion provisions were part of a bill providing $204 billion for the departments of Health and Human Services, Education and Labor for fiscal 1992. The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

The legislation also contains nearly $5.8 billion for education programs for the handicapped, a nearly $200-million increase over 1991. And it has a $124-million increase in job-training programs, to $4.2 billion.

The bill was approved by the House in July. The two chambers must approve a compromise measure before it can be sent to Bush.

As the Senate neared completion of the bill, it approved by voice vote an amendment offered by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) scuttling a sexual behavior survey planned by the government.

Helms sought to switch the $10.1 million requested for a survey of adult sexual practices to another program that counsels youngsters to avoid premarital sex. He argued that the survey was designed to provide statistics “to legitimize homosexual lifestyles.”