Abortion Measure Tests House GOP Unity : Politics: Leaders will try to close the rift opened by Dornan’s defense bill amendment, opposed by Rohrabacher. Other similar battles could arise.

If there was any one scene on the House floor late last week that typified the ideological struggle now confronting the House Republican leadership, it was an exchange between two of the most conservative members of the House: Reps. Robert K. Dornan and Dana Rohrabacher, both of Orange County.

Dornan of Garden Grove, a hawk on national defense issues, was now lobbying against the defense spending bill because it did not contain the anti-abortion amendment he authored that would ban privately funded abortions at overseas military hospitals.

But Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach, who normally would share Dornan’s abortion position, argued in vain that the defense bill should not be the battlefield for the war against abortion. Rohrabacher had his own special interest: the thousands of California jobs funded through this legislation, including the politically tenuous plan to continue production of the costly B-2 bomber.

The conflict was more than a collision of opinions. It pitted those seeking ideological purity on the issue of abortion against those trying to push through the Republican “agenda”--in this case, funding for pet defense projects.

Dornan and other abortion foes not only defeated the bill negotiated by the House and Senate, they vowed to wage the same fight against any other appropriations measure that compromises anti-abortion provisions previously approved by the House.

In doing so, the abortion foes cracked the glossy veneer of the Republican unity that has been on display on Capitol Hill since the first of the year.

And the threat to take the abortion fight to other major funding bills could affect negotiations on appropriations for international relations and labor, health and human services. The House versions of both bills contain anti-abortion provisions that the National Right To Life Committee and other such groups consider even more important than the Dornan amendment.

“I think [the defeat of the defense appropriations bill] is a signal to [House] appropriations ‘cardinals’ (as the subcommittee chairmen are called) and the leadership that these pro-life positions cannot be jettisoned when they become a little troublesome,” said Douglas Johnson, the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee.

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It is a warning that distresses many in the Republican ranks who have seen their own party members erect one more hurdle in the already delicate task of negotiating a budget deal with the Senate and the White House by the mid-November deadline.

Trying to force Republican senators to adopt the House’s more extreme language on abortion could weaken negotiations on other key funding priorities, some GOP House members warned.

“It might result in the end that we get absolutely nowhere,” said Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Tex.), an anti-abortion member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the negotiators with the Senate on the defense bill. “It’s unfortunate if the whole Republican agenda were to be brought down by friendly fire.”

The dilemma was a delight to one veteran Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill.

“I think the folks on the other side of the aisle are finding it’s quite easy to put a controversial measure on the bill. It’s another thing to get it enacted,” said the staffer, who did not want to be identified. “When you add these issues [like abortion], you can fall into quicksand.”

The division between the budget leaders and the abortion purists could best be seen in last week’s House vote on the $243-billion defense budget bill.

Going into the vote, many Democrats already opposed the bill, contending it contained “pork” projects for defense contractors. Some Republicans also stood up to oppose the measure because they wanted more congressional authority before sending U.S. troops to Bosnia. Other GOP members complained that the Senate had added an extra Seawolf submarine that they considered a “budget buster.”

But its defeat was ensured when anti-abortion groups, realizing that the Dornan amendment had been watered down, lobbied against the bill and warned that the action on it would be a “rated” vote to measure members’ opposition to abortion.

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Nearly two-thirds of the Republicans cast “no” votes, even though the measure contained most of their spending priorities, including new weapons and anti-missile defenses. The bill also contained military pay raises and other items that Dornan himself had initially fought for as chairman of the military personnel subcommittee.

The GOP split was also evident in the votes cast by members of the Orange County delegation, considered among the most conservative in the House.

The six Republicans are all abortion opponents, but only Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton sided with Dornan.

Of the four who rejected the anti-abortion argument and voted with House leaders, Rep. Christopher Cox of Newport Beach is a member of the House leadership team and Rep. Ron Packard of Oceanside is an Appropriations subcommittee chairman. Neither responded to requests for interviews on the abortion issue.

Rohrabacher and Rep. Jay Kim of Diamond Bar also supported the defense bill.

In a statement explaining his support, Kim did not address the abortion issue but instead hailed the bill as one that would “bolster our national security interests . . . and strengthen one of our country’s and California’s major economic industries.”

Rohrabacher said he disagreed with Dornan’s strategy because the bill’s defeat gives Democrats a new chance to chip away at hard-fought defense projects.

“If the funding for the B-2 ends up being taken out of the bill because the can of worms is opened up again [in House and Senate renegotiations], then this will not have been a very cost-effective fight,” Rohrabacher said.

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The blame, however, should not be assigned to Dornan, Rohrabacher added, but to House leaders who did not pay enough attention to the anti-abortion Republican majority.

“They are going to get more unpleasant surprises if they keep doing it,” Rohrabacher warned.

Dornan predicted after last week’s vote that a similar fight will be waged on the international relations bill if the position of the anti-abortion caucus is compromised.

“Remember who brought you to the den,” Dornan said in an interview after the vote, as though he were addressing the House leaders. “It was the social issues people that made us chairmen.”

The House version of the international relations bill prohibits aid for family planning groups that perform abortions overseas.

Also being watched is the labor, health and human services funding bill. The House removed the requirement that states allow low-income women to receive Medicaid-funded abortions in cases of rape or incest, prohibited federal funding for research of human embryos outside the womb and permitted medical schools to receive funding even if they do not mandate abortion training.

“If the conference report [by House and Senate negotiators] doesn’t look more like the House bill, then you will see a fight,” said Johnson, the anti-abortion lobbyist, about the international relations bill.

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But up to what point will all sides be satisfied?

A couple of days after the defense bill was shot down, House Speaker Newt Gingrich had not yet figured out a winning compromise.

“Beats me,” Gingrich said during an ABC television interview. “I mean, it’s proof that you can lead in a free society, but you can’t command people. And we’re going to have to sit down when we get back [from the 10-day congressional recess], give everybody a week to cool off, and sit down with the people who voted ‘no’ and say, ‘All right . . . what can we do?’ And then we’re going to have to go back to the Senate and conference and say, ‘Look, here’s reality.’ ”