Assembly Bill to Outlaw Abortion Procedure Fails

Despite an emotional appeal from Republican supporters, a bill aimed at outlawing partial-birth abortions in California except to save the mother’s life fell short of passage on a preliminary vote Thursday in the Assembly.

Amid vivid and gruesome descriptions of the rarely performed late-term medical procedure, Assemblyman Trice Harvey (R- Bakersfield) told colleagues: “If you can’t vote for this, I don’t know what you can vote for.”

But on an initial vote, the bill (AB 2984) by Assemblyman Bob Margett (R-Arcadia) picked up only 33 yes votes, short of the 41 needed for passage. Five Republicans joined with a solid bloc of 27 Democrats to vote no.

Lawmakers presented conflicting arguments for and against the procedure, with supporters citing congressional testimony that women overwhelmingly choose the procedure merely to end the pregnancy and opponents saying it is used only in cases of brain-damaged, near-death fetuses.

Partial-birth abortions, known medically as intact dilation and evacuation, are performed after 20 to 22 weeks of pregnancy. A doctor partially extracts a fetus feet first, then suctions out the brain to allow the head to pass through the birth canal.

Congress this year passed, but President Clinton vetoed, a similar measure. It would have banned the procedure except as a lifesaving measure.

Among passionate appeals to defeat the Margett bill and charges that legislators were “playing God,” Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame) related how her miscarriage, if it had come a few weeks later, could have required the partial-birth abortion procedure .

With the proposed ban in place, she told Margett, “it could have caused me to be sterile” and prevented the birth of her daughter.

In support of the measure, Assemblyman Tom J. Bordonaro Jr. (R-Paso Robles), who is physically disabled, said his condition--had it developed before his birth--could have qualified for a partial-birth abortion that would have ended his life.

For physicians who defied the ban, Margett’s bill called for civil penalties that range from license suspension and a $10,000 fine to license revocation and a $100,000 fine.

In other legislative action:

* The Assembly passed a measure allowing courts and prosecutors substantially wider authority to place juveniles in custody when they show signs of heading toward a life of crime.

The bill, AB 2531, by Jan Goldsmith (R-Poway), which passed 47 to 12, would expand the grounds to make “incorrigible” youths wards of the court, thus enabling authorities to confine juveniles for offenses such as truancy and curfew violations.

Goldsmith said the aim of his legislation was to intervene with youths before they reached the stage of committing full-fledged crimes.

* The Assembly passed, 41 to 28, a reduction in state taxes on vehicle fuel that would save motorists about 2.8 cents on the per-gallon price of gas. Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) said the bill, AB 2640, would do away with a “tax on a tax” resulting from overlapping levies. Because of conflicting Senate legislation, the fate of Pringle’s bill remained questionable.

* In the state Senate, bipartisan legislation that would privatize new state prisons was rejected on a 19-18 vote, two short of the 21 required for passage.

* The Senate on a 30-5 vote approved creation of the California Education Trust, which would allow California parents to save money for college by prepaying their children’s tuition.