Foster’s Prospects Fade After Key Senate Loss : Congress: Allies fall short of forcing vote on surgeon general nominee. Final attempt is scheduled for today.

The nomination of Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. to be U.S. surgeon general was declared all but dead Wednesday after his Senate supporters fell three votes shy of forcing a confirmation vote.

Under an agreement struck by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), a second and final attempt to break a threatened Republican filibuster on Foster’s nomination is scheduled for today. But prospects of a reversal appeared dim, and Senate leaders have agreed to shelve Foster’s nomination permanently if his backers fall short of the mark a second time.

Since his name was put forward in February, Foster, a 61-year-old practitioner of gynecology and obstetrics chosen by President Clinton to be the government’s principal advocate on public health issues, has become a lightning rod in the emotional debate over abortion rights.

Many lawmakers oppose the nomination because Foster performed abortions as part of his medical practice in Nashville, Tenn., and because his initial estimate of the number of abortions he performed was inaccurate. Foster now acknowledges having performed 39 abortions over a 38-year medical career, during which he delivered about 10,000 babies.

An angry-looking Clinton said he would continue trying to pick up more votes and accused Republicans of voting against his nominee to satisfy anti-abortion forces.

“I’m not through yet and we’re going to do our best to win it,” Clinton said.

But in the wake of Wednesday’s floor vote, a senior Senate aide said: “I can’t imagine anybody would flip at this point.” Many senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, privately agreed with that assessment.

Still, a few die-hard Foster supporters insisted that three Republicans might be persuaded to change their votes and join 11 of their GOP colleagues and all 46 Democrats who voted to cut off debate and allow an up-or-down vote on the nomination.

Both sides agreed that Foster would easily prevail in a confirmation vote, which requires only a simple majority of 51 votes for approval.

But Senate rules require at least 60 votes to shut down debate, and Foster’s backers have been unable to attract the additional support they would need to end a filibuster threatened by Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), who is one of several Republicans--including Dole--seeking the party’s presidential nomination.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry acknowledged that the chances of turning the vote around are uncertain at best. “It’s not entirely clear that we’re going to be able to change any minds,” McCurry said.

“This was not a vote about the right of the President to choose a surgeon general. This was really a vote about every American woman’s right to choose,” said Clinton, discussing the floor vote with Foster by his side in the White House’s Rose Garden. “Because he cannot pass the political litmus test that has a stranglehold on the other party, they cannot even allow a simple vote.”

Clinton met with five Republican senators before Wednesday’s vote, including four who had already declared themselves in favor of Foster’s confirmation. But the presidential lobbying had no visible effect.

In the debate before the vote, Democrats lavishly praised Foster as a champion of health care for women and children and an indefatigable fighter against teen-age pregnancies who forsook a genteel physician’s life to work with society’s underprivileged.

The Democrats accused Republicans, particularly Dole and Gramm, of playing presidential politics by trying to outdo one another to curry favor with the party’s die-hard conservatives, who are vehemently opposed to Foster.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, accused Clinton of engaging in cynical politics. For months, they have seethed at the President because they believe that he is deliberately using Foster’s nomination to divide them, since some GOP senators favor abortion rights.

“I don’t happen to believe it, but many do,” said Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.).

Dole accused the President of trying to “drive a wedge” between Senate Republicans.

For the most part, however, Republicans argued that Foster’s accomplishments are overblown and do not justify his confirmation. They said his changing accounts of the number of abortions he has performed have irreparably damaged his credibility.

The attacks on Foster enraged Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), one of the doctor’s fiercest champions. She said she was disgusted by the “defamation of a man’s character . . . and career” and appalled by the “sacrificing of a decent man on the altar of right-wing politics.”

Only minutes before the scheduled floor vote, a dozen members of the House Black Caucus made a dramatic entrance into the Senate chamber and stood in the back to show their support for Foster, who is black.

Among the 11 Republicans who voted to end debate was Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.), who chairs the Labor and Human Resources Committee that approved Foster’s nomination last month. Kassebaum said she opposes his confirmation but believes that he deserves a Senate floor vote on his nomination.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) also voted to end debate, noting that if Democrats had used the same procedure against Clarence Thomas in 1991, his nomination to the Supreme Court would not have come to a vote. Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by then-University of Oklahoma Law Prof. Anita F. Hill, ultimately was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48.

“Justice Thomas would not have received 60 votes,” said Specter, another candidate for the GOP presidential nomination.

At least one high-ranking GOP senator privately agreed with Democratic charges that the Foster nomination had become embroiled in GOP presidential politics.

“Of course this was about presidential politics,” said the senator, asking not to be quoted by name. “Dole told us: ‘This is important to me.’ ”

Times staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this story.