Clinton to Lift Gag Rule, Fetal Tissue Use Ban

President Clinton plans to reverse two major Republican anti-abortion policies as early as today, fulfilling key campaign pledges but opening his new Administration to what promises to be bitter controversy.

The abortion orders will end the Bush Administration’s so-called gag rule, which prohibits abortion counseling by most family-planning clinics, and will lift the ban on research using fetal tissue obtained through abortions.

Aides said Clinton planned to issue his orders today but warned that final review by White House attorneys could delay the action.

If the moves come today, the timing would be certain to inflame abortion opponents. This is the 20th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions nationwide.

For many years that anniversary has been marked--as this one will be--by a large anti-abortion demonstration in the nation’s capital. But for each of the last 12 years, the tens of thousands of abortion protesters have been addressed by a sympathetic President, either in person or through a broadcast telephone call from the Oval Office. This time, the demonstrators will be confronted with a stark example of how much their cause lost in November’s election.

As he opened his first full day in office, Clinton quickly delved into several other major and highly potent issues: the ban on gays in the military, the future of embattled FBI Director William S. Sessions--whom Clinton appears inclined to fire--and the economy.

White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said Clinton will announce within the week his two-step plan for ending the ban against gays in the military. He will immediately halt all efforts by the military branches to find and discharge homosexuals. Within several months, he will issue a formal order directing the military to remove the ban entirely.

“Immediately, the policy of kicking people out of the military because they’re gay will be out,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a gay lawmaker who has been active in advancing gay and lesbian rights and who was consulted on the lifting of the gay ban. “The fact that you’re gay or lesbian or what you do off base is not going to be a problem,” Frank said.

That topic was among those discussed by Defense Secretary Les Aspin and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who met for more than two hours Thursday.

At least one of the chiefs has argued that questions about a service member’s sexual orientation should be discontinued, but that gay and lesbian personnel should be required not to make an issue of their homosexuality.

White House aides also sent unmistakable signals that Clinton is heading toward a decision to remove Sessions, whom a Justice Department report found to have committed a series of ethical violations. Sessions disputes the report’s findings.

“I have to say that the report is disturbing,” Clinton Communications Director George Stephanopoulos said. “It shows precisely the kinds of violations and abuse of privilege that President Clinton is committed to changing in Washington.”

Stephanopoulos was careful to say that lawyers in the White House counsel’s office would review Sessions’ reply to the report before making a final recommendation, but he left little doubt about the preliminary view.

“We want to make sure we’ve heard all sides on this before we make any final judgment. But there appears to be, according to this report, some sort of pattern of practice,” he said.

Senior FBI officials also have expressed their view that Sessions should quit, bureau sources said this week.

Among its key findings, the 161-page report said Sessions set up official engagements to justify charging the government for personal trips, and improperly billed the FBI nearly $10,000 for a fence around his home.

It also found that he had spent almost eight times the $5,000 limit to redecorate his FBI office; participated in a “sham” to avoid paying taxes on the value of his limousine service; and violated counterintelligence regulations by giving two Russian Kirov Ballet dancers a ride in an FBI car and failing to report the contact.

Sessions has said that he was following the advice of his attorneys and has called the inquiry into his conduct “totally unwarranted.”

In a three-page statement released earlier this week by his private attorneys, the embattled FBI director said that he had conducted himself “in accordance with the law and with uncompromised ethical standards” and that he “will continue to do so.”

When he was appointed five years ago, Sessions was named with the understanding that his tenure as head of the FBI would run 10 years. But the law does not guarantee him any fixed tenure, and he can be removed by the President at any point.

Clinton also took some steps on the economic front. He signed a national security directive expanding the National Security Council to include a key economic adviser, Robert E. Rubin, as well as his designated ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright. Rubin will head Clinton’s proposed National Economic Council and his appointment to the NSC was designed to underline Clinton’s belief that economics must play a key role in national security decisions.

The exact structure and role of Rubin’s job has not yet been announced. Clinton aides have been working on an executive order that will lay out the specifics of the job, but did not release the order Thursday.

Economics probably will have to take a back seat again today to the abortion issue.

Clinton pledged during his campaign to eliminate the gag rule, which prevents any clinic that receives federal money from discussing abortion with patients. His expected executive order would fulfill that pledge.

He also spoke in favor of ending the ban on the use of fetal tissue obtained from abortions in federally financed research, citing the benefits of such research for medical problems ranging from Parkinson’s disease to diabetes. Fetal tissue is especially adaptive to transplantation, and scientists hope that transplanted fetal cells could take over the functions of cells that have been destroyed or damaged in such syndromes.

The controversial ban on federal funding for research using fetal tissue obtained from abortions has been the subject of intense public debate since it was first imposed by the Ronald Reagan Administration in April, 1988. The ban has pitted medical researchers and disease organizations against certain anti-abortion forces.

Times staff writers Melissa Healy, Marlene Cimons and Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.