Congress Approves Ban on Late-Term Abortions

WASHINGTON — Abortion opponents won final congressional approval Tuesday for a measure banning a controversial late-term abortion procedure, sending the bill to a president who has vetoed similar legislation once before.

But while antiabortion forces gained strength in the U.S. Senate, they fell three senators short of the 67 needed to override a veto.

President Clinton vetoed a virtually identical bill in 1995. And he indicated Tuesday that he would veto the 1996 legislation. But after the 64-36 vote, Republican backers of the bill portrayed the president as wrestling with the politically sensitive decision. And they warned Clinton that if he tries to block the bill for a second time in three years, abortion opponents may well muster the small handful of votes needed to overturn his action.

“This is something that will not go away,” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) told reporters after the vote. Noting that the bill has gained support each time the Senate has voted on it, Lott said that one more Senate vote on the matter could put abortion foes over the top.

“We just need two to three more next time,” said Lott. “Eventually, that will happen.”

California’s Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer both voted against the ban on the so-called “partial birth” abortion procedure and they actively lobbied to hold potential vote-switchers in check. In an interview after the vote, Boxer characterized it as a “victory” that abortion-rights advocates had mustered the votes to uphold a White House veto. But acknowledging the growing strength of abortion opponents, Boxer lamented that “a woman’s right to choose is under the fiercest attack I’ve seen since I came to Congress in 1983. . . . It is a sad time for our country.”

At the White House, Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry signaled that the president’s opposition to the proposed ban remains unchanged. McCurry said the president “feels very strongly” that the bill should contain exceptions for abortions performed to protect the health and future fertility of the mother--a waiver that the Senate has decisively rejected in recent days.

Recent revisions to the bill are “not the same thing as taking care of the concerns that the president has about the women,” McCurry added.

Tuesday’s vote came a day after the American Medical Assn.’s chief policy-making body, in an apparent turnabout, announced its support for the late-term abortion ban. The AMA dismissed the procedure as “bad medicine” and said that it could find no circumstances in which an alternative abortion method could not be used more safely.

In the procedure barred by the bill, a doctor delivers, feet-first, all but the head of a fetus. With most of the developing baby’s body outside its mother’s body, the doctor opens a hole in the base of the skull and suctions out the fetal brain tissue. That causes the collapse of the head before delivery of the dead fetus is completed.

The AMA’s support came after the bill’s authors agreed to language clarifying the procedure covered by the bill and strengthening legal protections for doctors who need to resort to the procedure to save a mother’s life.

In Tuesday’s vote, two senators who have opposed the ban in the past reversed themselves and voted in favor of the measure. One, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), acknowledged the impact of the AMA’s endorsement, saying that it “allays some of my earlier concerns about this measure.”

But defenders of abortion rights lost a more significant vote when Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) switched his past position, voting for the ban.

Daschle’s switch came after the Senate last week decisively rejected a compromise he had introduced. Daschle’s proposal would have outlawed all types of abortions performed after a fetus has reached the point of viability outside the womb. At the same time, it would have provided exemptions for women whose health would be “grievously injured” by a continued pregnancy.

By contrast, the bill passed by the Senate would provide exceptions only in cases where a woman’s life is in immediate danger from a continued pregnancy. The bill also differs from Daschle’s in that it applies only to one abortion procedure. The method that would be banned is used to terminate pregnancies beyond the 20th week, which means that many of those abortions affected would occur before fetal viability. The Supreme Court, in a landmark 1973 ruling, forbade states from regulating abortions before the point of fetal viability has been reached but allowed the regulation of abortions beyond that point.

In an emotional appeal after the vote, Daschle called on colleagues to “find common ground” that shuns the extremes on the divisive abortion issue.

“This issue has become politicized to the extent that much of the rhetoric has substantially diminished the potential for real discourse on such an important matter,” he said. “The result is that sincere efforts to find common ground have been labeled as ‘shams,’ as ‘political cover’ and ‘deceptive’ by many who passed judgment without having even read the legislation.”

Daschle, a Roman Catholic, said his “greatest disappointment is reserved for the Catholic church,” which, he said, encouraged him to draft his alternative and then ultimately denounced it. He excoriated Catholic leaders, especially those in his own state, for “their harsh rhetoric and vitriolic characterizations, usually more identified with the radical right than with thoughtful religious leadership.”

Religious conservatives hailed Tuesday’s vote as a signal win and predicted both imminent victory on this measure and long-term gains for their social agenda.

“The momentum has not only shifted in our direction but is accelerating rapidly,” said Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition, which has lobbied steadily for the partial-birth abortion ban. “It’s not a question of if but when the president’s veto is overridden.”

Reed added that the steady gains antiabortion forces have made in votes on the partial-birth abortion ban demonstrate that “abortion in particular and social issues in general are going to be the lodestone of American politics through the 1998 elections and beyond.”