‘Partial-Birth’ Abortion Ban Again Passes House

Abortion foes in the House on Thursday adopted a ban on a controversial late-term abortion procedure for the third time in a year, challenging President Clinton to again veto a bill that he vetoed last April.

The 295-136 House vote--with 77 Democrats joining Republicans to pass the bill--is large enough to override another Clinton veto. But it was the Senate that last year failed to muster the necessary two-thirds vote to override the president’s veto, and it is in the Senate again that abortion foes face the tougher fight.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) acknowledged Thursday that, while the measure almost certainly will pass in the Senate, it is not likely now to do so by the margin needed to override a veto. But Lott said he is hopeful that growing public awareness of the bid to outlaw the late-term abortion procedure would increase the pressure on some senators to switch sides and back the bill.

With the outcome in the House a foregone conclusion, Thursday’s debate began with numerous calls for civility. But in the discussions that followed, lawmakers’ acrimonious exchanges of rhetoric reflected the deep divisions that continue to separate them--and the nation--on the abortion issue.

The bill passed Thursday would make a crime a procedure that abortion providers call “intact dilation and extraction,” but which is termed “partial-birth abortion” by those who would outlaw it. As described in vivid and repeated detail on the floor, a fetus is pulled feet-first into the birth canal and its head is collapsed by suctioning the skull contents before it is removed. The procedure is used to end some pregnancies after the 20th week of gestation.

Foes of the effort to block the procedure argued that under a landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision, it would be unconstitutional to outlaw access to this or any other abortion technique before a fetus achieves viability--a milestone that may occur anytime between the 23rd and 26th week of pregnancy. They added that, beyond that point, the procedure is used only to end pregnancies that have gone tragically awry.

In such cases, said opponents of the bill, it would be cruel and unwise for Congress to ban a procedure that many doctors choose as a way to protect a woman’s life or health from a continued pregnancy that might threaten her.

Proponents of the bill said they pressed for another round of voting on the issue because they believe a new political climate exists in which Clinton might sign the measure. That shift, they said, came after Ron Fitzsimmons, a leading abortion-rights advocate, said that he and others had lied when they claimed that the operation is used rarely and only in cases of severe fetal abnormality or maternal health crisis.

“Partial-birth abortion--infanticide in plain English--is business as usual in the abortion industry: That is what the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers has told us,” said Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), one of the chief sponsors of the ban. “Is this House prepared to defend the proposition that infanticide is a constitutional right?”

On several occasions, Clinton has declared that he would veto the bill again if it comes to him without exemptions for pre-viability abortions and those performed to protect the life, health or future fertility of the mother.

Several lawmakers sought to bring such a bill to the House floor for debate Thursday. But House leaders, in an unusual parliamentary procedure, took steps Wednesday night that greatly limited the scope of debate. On Thursday, Republicans repeatedly fought back efforts to have amendments considered that could make the bill acceptable to the White House.

One such proposal would have tightened exemptions adopted by 40 states governing abortions after the fetus has reached viability. Most states have outlawed all post-viability abortions but have provided a broadly interpreted exemption for the health--physical as well as psychological--of the mother.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) proposed outlawing post-viability abortions throughout the nation in all cases but those posing “serious physical long-term consequences” to the mother.

The defeat of such amendments caused some lawmakers to charge that backers of the abortion bill were more interested in embarrassing Clinton and swaying public opinion than in ensuring that the late-term procedure is used only in medical emergencies.

“They’re baiting President Clinton” to again veto the bill, Rep. Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said. “If they really wanted this bill to pass and be signed into law, they would have made the simple adjustment” he called for, she said.

With each round of debate, abortion foes have said that they hope to make new gains with the public, a majority of which appears to support strong restrictions on most late-term abortions. In a recent poll of Californians conducted by the Field Institute, 62% supported a woman’s right to an abortion in the first trimester. But approval for later abortions dropped sharply to 26% in the second trimester and 14% in the third.

At the same time, however, 78% agreed with Clinton’s position allowing late-term abortions if the mother’s health is endangered.