Abortion Foes in GOP to Battle Wilson on Funding

As Gov. Pete Wilson unveils his new state budget today, he may find that some of the harshest critics will be antiabortion conservatives in his own party and not Democrats.

Two Republican lawmakers fired the opening volley in the budget debate by calling on the pro-abortion rights governor to all but eliminate funding for abortion, and to make deep cuts in the Office of Family Planning, a state agency that doles out money to groups such as Planned Parenthood.

“The plan is to make sure the [money] does not go for state-funded abortions. That’s the bottom line,” said Assemblyman Bruce Thompson (R-Fallbrook), the leading candidate to become chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee and a staunch opponent of abortion.

In his new $57-billion-plus budget, Wilson will propose a 15% income and business tax cut, deeper welfare reductions, more money for police, a freeze on fee increases at state universities and colleges, new bonds to build prisons and schools, and more funds for programs to combat teenage pregnancy.

But few issues will generate more passion than abortion funding, even though the money under attack is a small fraction of all state spending.

In 1994, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the state paid $35.5 million for 104,010 Medi-Cal abortions. Wilson’s Office of Family Planning has a $71-million budget. In addition, some conservatives are targeting the state health department’s $56-million program that provides prenatal testing for certain genetic abnormalities.

The Office of Family Planning pays for a wide range of services ranging from sex education and counseling for teenagers to HIV testing. About a third of the agency’s money, about $21 million, goes to Planned Parenthood, which provides 33,000 abortions a year in California as well as other services, including dispensing contraceptives for 280,000 men and women annually.

Any increase to the Office of Family Planning would anger some conservatives.

“I will try to stand in the way of that,” Thompson said. “I don’t think [an increase] will play well with the conservative members of my caucus.”

Adding to the pressure to limit abortion funding, the Assembly is firmly in Republican control for the first time since 1970--before abortion was deemed legal in California.

Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle is a strong foe of abortion, although he has voted for budgets that include abortion funding. Last week, he reiterated his opposition to abortion after winning the speakership and said he would favor holding hearings on the issue.

In the state Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority, Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) has said several times that abortion funding is one of the issues on which he will not compromise. But Senate Republican Leader Rob Hurtt is an abortion foe. Unlike Pringle, Hurtt has not voted for a budget in his three years in office.

Democratic lawmakers--and the few Republicans in the Legislature who favor abortion rights--are certain to put up a fight over any attempt to limit abortion funding. And because the budget must pass by a two-thirds vote, Wilson needs Democratic support for the spending plan.

“A woman’s right to choose is of paramount importance,” Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz of Sylmar said. “A lot of people in California don’t get this. A woman’s right to choose is at risk.”

The governor’s office on Tuesday had no comment on the renewed attack on abortion funding.

Abortion opponents tried late last summer to block passage of the current budget. Wilson managed to quell that uprising, personally telephoning several antiabortion Republicans in the Assembly to win support for his budget.

Although votes for the budget always materialize after varying amounts of wrangling and compromise, some conservative lawmakers are itching for a new abortion fight.

This time, they believe they will be better organized.

Hoping to shift the focus onto abortion early in the budget process, Thompson and state Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside) last month sent separate letters to Wilson. Both vow to raise the issue during budget hearings this spring, something that did not occur last year.

In his letter, Haynes waved the partisan flag, enclosing copies of the state and national Republican Party planks on abortion. The state GOP calls for elimination of the “Office of Family Planning and liberal left agencies it funds.”

“Many taxpayers, including myself and other Republican legislators, not only disbelieve in abortion, but conscientiously abhor being coerced to fund the abortion industry with our tax dollars,” Haynes wrote.

Neither Haynes nor Thompson has heard back from Wilson. “I’m surprised,” Thompson said Tuesday. “I would have thought there would have been some dialogue.”

If Thompson becomes Budget Committee chairman, he will be able to force such dialogue. Thompson said he will hold hearings on what he believes is fraud in abortion funding, and is considering introducing a bill to ban late-term abortions.

“I want to make sure there are facts and figures,” Thompson said. “Who’s having these abortions? There needs to be some accounting.”

Antiabortion activists outside the Legislature are also expecting the issue to have high visibility this year.

“It would be a poor choice for pro-life Republicans in an election year to leave the troops demoralized,” said Jan Carroll of the California affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee. “We expect them to vote to take abortion funds out of the budget.”

State funding of abortion was an issue in the 1970s and 1980s. But the state Supreme Court, citing California’s constitutional clause guaranteeing the right to privacy, ruled in 1981 that the Legislature must fund abortions for poor women, so long as it pays for other services related to pregnancy.

The Legislature defied that ruling during the 1980s. But whenever lawmakers withheld money for abortion, state appellate courts ordered the funds reinstated. The Legislature has not cut abortion funds since 1990.

“The specter of the Legislature passing a knowingly unconstitutional budget is not a laughing matter,” said Margaret Crosby of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Certainly we would return to court.”

Katherine Kneer, executive director of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said abortion rights activists are “anticipating the worst.” But she also predicted that Wilson “will be courageous.”

“He doesn’t get anything by doing what [abortion opponents] want,” Kneer said. “You shouldn’t try to be in the middle. You just get shot at by both sides.”