Wilson Faces Showdown With GOP Foes of Abortion : Budget: Deal may collapse over family planning funding for poor and Democrats’ dislike of welfare cuts.

Gov. Pete Wilson appears to be heading for a showdown with anti-abortion Republicans in the Assembly as he tries to win support for a $56-billion state budget that proposes to spend $40 million on abortions for poor women.

On Friday, anti-abortion groups--sensing more power in the Capitol than they have wielded in years--stepped up efforts to kill the budget proposal because it contains abortion money, began a last-minute appeal to lawmakers and organized a phone call campaign to Sacramento.

“This is not a budget that pro-life taxpayers or unborn children can live with,” the California Pro-Life Council said in a memo sent to legislators Friday.

As many as 18 Assembly Republicans are demanding that the pro-abortion rights governor carve out a large portion of the $75 million earmarked for family planning programs and cut most, if not all, of the state money spent on abortions for poor women.

The lawmakers, most of whom are freshmen, are demanding that if any money is spent on abortions, the budget should include language requiring that minors receive parental approval before receiving abortions.

Wilson is one of the few Republican presidential candidates who supports abortion rights. His presidential campaign spokesman Sean Walsh sounded unconcerned about the implications of the abortion fight.

“It doesn’t affect our campaign,” he said. “The governor’s position on pro-choice is well-known. The governor is not changing his position.”

But as Wilson emphasizes his anti-affirmative action position to a national audience, he stands to be sidetracked by an abortion fight in his own Statehouse with hard-line anti-abortion lawmakers.

“As far as we’re concerned, it is [a showdown],” Assemblyman Bruce Thompson (R-Fallbrook) said. “We got nothing. Out of all the negotiations, the pro-life members of our caucus received nothing with regards to the abortion issue.”

The budget, already 29 days late, was headed for a vote in the Legislature today. But as if Wilson’s problems with his own party in the Assembly weren’t enough, he faced new trouble in the Senate, where passage of the budget had seemed almost certain.

The Senate came to an abrupt halt Friday when President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer announced that there was new disagreement with Wilson over whether proposed cuts in welfare and aid to the elderly, disabled and blind are for only one year, as Lockyer wants, or permanent, as Wilson wants.

“I expect he will cancel his trip to Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire and other places in order to make himself available for the work that needs to be done,” Lockyer said.

The legislator raised the possibility that the dispute could prompt another two weeks of closed-door negotiations with Wilson, saying that Senate Democrats most likely would not agree to permanent welfare cuts. But Lockyer also said the problem could be solved sooner, and told senators to remain in town for a possible vote on the budget today.

“I just want to make the point that there isn’t a budget agreement if these are not one-year cuts,” Lockyer said.

The cuts would leave a mother with two children with $566 a month in Los Angeles, Orange and other high-rent counties.

Wilson said late Friday that he believes the welfare cuts are permanent, that Lockyer agreed to them and that “this can only be regarded as a breach of good faith negotiations.”

Responded Lockyer: “We’re talking about elderly, blind and disabled people. When the state is short of money, they should have to make sacrifices too. But anyone who suggests that they should be forced to live in poverty as a permanent condition is unfit to hold high office.”

Wilson’s biggest obstacle appears to be the Assembly.

Speaker Doris Allen said Friday that there is not the two-thirds, 54-vote majority needed to pass the budget in the lower house, and cited as a main reason Republican opposition to spending $40 million on abortions for poor women.

Allen, who is anti-abortion, said she plans to take up the matter with the governor in search of a solution.

Leading the anti-abortion fight is Thompson, a first-term businessman who opposes abortion for religious reasons. After meeting Friday in his office with several anti-abortion members of the Assembly, Thompson said he expects “you’ll see 18 ‘no’ votes up there.”

As Thompson spoke, Assemblyman Tom Woods (R-Shasta) came into his office and told him that he was among the committed anti-abortion votes: “I can’t go back to my district unless there’s a cut.”

The 18 “no” votes, if they materialize, are not enough by themselves to kill the budget. But most of the 39 Democrats, including the 16 from Los Angeles County, oppose the governor’s spending plan, saying that the welfare cuts are too deep and that Los Angeles County receives too little help with its $1.2-billion budget deficit.

Several Republican lawmakers oppose Wilson’s decision to run for the presidency, and some, including Thompson, have endorsed Texas Sen. Phil Gramm for the GOP nomination.

The proposed budget includes a line item for family planning--$75.1 million for the 1995-96 fiscal year, up from $63.2 million. The budget does not have a line item for abortions. But Democrats and Republicans say the state spends about $40 million a year on abortions for poor women.

Some anti-abortion activists and lawmakers also oppose the $63 million earmarked for a genetic testing program, aimed at discovering defects in fetuses.

For several years running in the 1980s, the Legislature approved budgets that contained no authorization for state-funded abortions, and the state Supreme Court or courts of appeal would order that the money be spent.

During the Wilson years, abortion has been a relatively quiet issue in Sacramento, and the governor’s budgets have included money for family planning, abortions and genetic testing of fetuses.

But with Republicans taking control of the Assembly this year, and the number of anti-abortion lawmakers within the GOP increasing, abortion funding again is flaring as a major issue.

Thompson and others say that with the state courts now dominated by appointees of Republican governors, the courts may take a dimmer view that the state must fund abortions for poor women.

“Few Californians realize their tax money is going to doctors with blood on their gloves--abortionists,” said Brian Johnston, executive director of the California Pro-Life Council, which, along with the Traditional Values Coalition, is lobbying anti-abortion lawmakers to stand firm.

“The abortion industry is on the public dole,” Johnston said. “Wilson has been playing a semantic game, portraying himself as being in the middle. He is much farther to the left than people understand. He is an abortion advocate.”

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, lobbyist for the Traditional Values Coalition, said his forces have been on the phones calling lawmakers deemed to be “soft and in need of a little push.”

“This is going to be the first time that we’ve had this many Republicans saying, ‘Hey, we’re drawing the line.’ . . . It’s about time that they recognize that we’ve got to stop paying for the murder of these unborn babies.”

To a national audience, Wilson runs the risk of appearing to soften his long-held pro-choice stand if he caves in to the demands of hard-liners in his own party on abortion funding.

Of more immediate concern, the governor risks losing Democratic support in the Senate and whatever Democratic support he has in the Assembly for his budget if he agrees to reduce family planning money.

Sacramento political consultant Wayne Johnson said that as Wilson runs for President, the “real danger is not that the budget contains abortion funding, but that it is an increase.” That, he added, is “infuriating to the rank-and-file activists out here.”

“Pete Wilson is mapping out a different set of issues to talk about and has been scoring a lot of points,” Johnson said. “He is going to talk about issues that the activists agree with him on. I don’t think he wants to fight this issue.”