House OKs ‘Partial-Birth’ Abortion Ban; Veto Likely

House Republicans, defying the threat of another veto by President Clinton, for the third time in recent years pushed through legislation Wednesday to prohibit certain forms of abortion--a key election-year issue for the GOP’s conservative wing.

Passage came on a heavily party-line vote of 287 to 141. Although the House vote achieved the two-thirds majority needed to override the anticipated veto, the Senate count on a similar measure in October was 63 to 34--not enough to override.

The bill now goes to a joint House-Senate conference committee to reconcile differences between the two versions.

Clinton has vetoed comparable measures twice, in 1996 and 1997, and earlier this week reiterated his intention to block the new bill. Passage of the abortion legislation has become virtually an annual rite since the GOP took control of Congress in 1995.

The bill passed Wednesday would prohibit medical procedures in which part of the fetus is pulled from the womb and into the birth canal before it is killed--a technique that opponents have branded a “partial-birth” abortion.

Debate on the measure was intensely partisan--and emotional. House Republican leaders rushed the measure to the floor, bypassing the Judiciary Committee, under rules that barred floor amendments, including a proposed Democratic alternative supported by some GOP moderates.

Democrats angrily charged that the GOP’s revival of the bill was largely a political ploy designed to win support in November not only from conservatives but from swing eeevoters who generally back abortion rights but find the partial-birth procedure objectionable.

“This is more about sound bites and attack ads, not about saving people’s lives,” Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas) asserted.

Several women lawmakers, mostly Democrats, also opposed the GOP measure, contending that it unfairly took away choices in medical emergencies involving pregnancies. “How dare you demonize--how dare you trivialize--what women do!” Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) told the House.

Republicans characterized the bill as drawing a “line in the sand” to prohibit what they charged was a cruel procedure at any stage of a pregnancy and rejected demands for exceptions beyond the need to save the life of the mother.

The Democrat-drafted proposal would have prohibited all late-term abortions, no matter what procedure is used, but it would have exempted those cases in which physicians had determined that the procedure was needed to protect the mother’s life or health.

Democrats generally have been against outlawing or limiting any abortion procedures, but they said that their proposed alternative was preferable because the GOP version was not limited to the late term and would not have allowed for exemptions for a woman who might otherwise be left unable to have more children.

In the vote on the bill, members of the 52-person California delegation generally followed party lines. The exceptions were Republicans Stephen Horn of Long Beach and Steven T. Kuykendall of Rancho Palos Verdes, who voted against the measure, and Democrats Joe Baca of San Bernardino, Gary A. Condit of Ceres and Matthew G. Martinez of Monterey Park, who voted for it. Rep. Tom Campbell (R-San Jose), the GOP Senate nominee against incumbent Democrat Dianne Feinstein, did not vote.

Although advocates on both sides of the issue agree that reliable numbers are hard to come by, supporters of the ban estimate that the procedure is used about 3,000 to 5,000 times a year in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.