Abortion Funds Ban Retained in House Test

In the first clear test of congressional sentiment on abortion since the election of a President who favors abortion rights, the House voted Wednesday to continue the 17-year-old ban on federal funding for poor women’s abortions.

While the fate of the ban also depends on action in the Senate, the margin of the House vote, 255 to 178, is an indication that some form of the ban is likely to remain in place. The vote also suggests trouble for President Clinton’s health care reform effort if, as expected, he proposes making abortion part of a package of health care benefits for all Americans.

As evidence of the emotion that surrounds the issue, the House became embroiled in an unusually bitter debate that took on racial overtones. When the author of the ban, Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), suggested that some opponents were seeking federal funding of Medicaid abortions to reduce the number of poor people and “refine the breed,” black women lawmakers assailed him both during and after the debate and sought, unsuccessfully, to have him censured.

The furor gave many of the newer members of Congress--who believe that the balance of power in the House remains unchanged despite the addition of 21 female lawmakers and 13 new black members--the opportunity to express what is a more widespread frustration in Congress.

“It’s still all white men in blue suits that know what’s best for poor people,” complained Rep. Corinne Brown (D-Fla.). “All you’ve got to do is look at the votes.”

Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento), a member of the House leadership, said that he found the anger of freshmen members “more poignant, because they came (to Congress) hoping to move the country more rapidly than they have been able to.”

Lawmakers said they expect the Administration to help fashion a compromise on Medicaid funding for abortion as the legislation moves to the Senate, where the climate for relaxing the ban may be somewhat more favorable, and then into a House-Senate conference committee.

The House amendment, which was supported by Orange County’s entire delgation, would allow the government to pay for abortion only in cases of rape and incest or to save a pregnant woman’s life. It was attached to a massive bill funding the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education departments.

The ban differs from current law in that it includes rape and incest victims, who are believed to account for only a small number of all abortions.

Opposition to lifting the ban came from many lawmakers who said that, while they support a woman’s right to abortion, they are reluctant to force taxpayers--millions of whom oppose the procedure on moral grounds--to underwrite the cost. In essence, said Rep. John E. Porter (R-Ill.), that would amount to an “official sanction” of abortion by the government.

Congressional vote-counters were watching Wednesday’s proceedings closely for signs of whether the political climate over abortion had changed with the addition of more than 100 new House members and the election of the first President in more than a decade to support abortion rights.

During Clinton’s first week in office, he sought to prove that there had been a sea change on the issue. In a series of executive memoranda, he overturned the so-called gag rule, which restricted abortion counseling at federally funded family planning clinics; began allowing abortions at U.S. military hospitals overseas and reversed a 1984 order that prevented the United States from providing foreign aid to overseas organizations that perform or promote abortion.

Clinton also signaled that he wanted the Hyde amendment overturned when he omitted the provision from the budget that he submitted to Congress. However, the Appropriations Committee put it back in the budget.

A group of women lawmakers successfully employed a series of complicated parliamentary maneuvers to strip the ban out of the bill by noting that it violated a House rule against “legislating” on an appropriations bill. But Hyde succeeded in reinserting it as an amendment by changing the wording slightly.

Officials involved in the health care reform effort have indicated that Clinton will propose including abortion coverage in the basic package of benefits for all Americans--in part because he supports abortion rights and in part because omitting it would deny a benefit already included in most health insurance plans.

But House members warned that the same forces would attempt to defeat the inclusion of abortion in the health care package. Some have even gone so far as to assert that the issue of using federal funds to pay for abortion, if Clinton insists on pressing it, could sink the entire health care reform effort.

“It’s exactly the same issue. You can count up the votes yourself,” said Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), an abortion rights supporter who chairs the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights.

The debate over Medicaid funding for abortion took its unexpected and bitter turn when Hyde suggested that some abortion rights advocates were following a hidden agenda aimed at reducing the poor population.

Hissing erupted, and Rep. Cardiss Collins (D-Ill.), a black lawmaker, leaped to her feet, declaring: “I’m offended by that kind of debate.”

Hyde, who once represented part of Collins’ district, replied: “I will direct my friend to a few ministers who will tell her just what goes on in her community.” Later, he apologized for that comment and asked that his comments be stricken from the official record.

Outraged, Collins sought unsuccessfully to have Hyde censured and prohibited from speaking for the rest of the day.

When he attempted to apologize to Collins, the group rejected his efforts and Brown yelled: “It’s not her; it’s black people.”

They also turned their wrath on Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), who made an unsuccessful attempt to add an amendment that would have allowed Medicaid funding of abortions in cases where a woman’s health is jeopardized. Another round of yelling ensued.

Noting that he was on their side, Obey later said the episode “proves that liberals know how to shoot each other in the foot once an hour on the hour.”

After the vote, Hyde insisted that his comment had merely been a paraphrase of the positions of Margaret Sanger, the founder of the organization that is now Planned Parenthood. He shrugged off the criticism by the other lawmakers, saying they were “looking for a reason to explode and make me a bad guy.”

Brown, the Florida freshman, told reporters that she found it paradoxical that Hyde and others would insist upon bringing poor babies into the world at the same time the House has voted down money that would be spent on jobs and education for the impoverished people who are already born.

“All you’ve got to do is look at the votes (and see) the white Southern male--or whatever--still knows what’s best,” she said.