c.1997 The Boston Globe
<
WASHINGTON—The Clinton administration has been quietly helpingto design a compromise on banning most late-term abortions that, ifenacted, would mark the first federal restriction on legal abortion.
^@ The compromise, which would ban abortion after about 23 weeksunless a mother's health was in jeopardy, would represent adramatic shift in the quarter-century political battle overabortion.
President Clinton 
's agreement to such a plan would represent abreak from traditional Democratic allegiance with women's groupsthat regard any restriction as a lever to undermine abortion rightsin general.
The proposal being considered would be acceptable to Clinton andmany abortion-rights supporters in Congress because it contains anexception to protect women's health, unlike the bill the presidentvetoed last year.
The exception to protect women's health is not so broad as todraw opposition as did amendments that abortion-rights supportersoffered last year. In addition, Republicans who oppose abortionmight be willing to support the compromise as a way to restrictabortions.
Under the plan, abortions would be prohibited when a fetusbecomes viable. Viability is generally considered to be late in thesecond trimester or the third trimester of pregnancy. There wouldbe an extremely limited exception for health reasons or to save thelife of the mother.
Once there is agreement on the wording of the women's healthexception, ``it's something I can safely say we will support,'' aWhite House aide said Thursday.
The adminstration's renewed interest in tackling what may be themost wrenching aspect of the abortion issue—late-term abortions _has arisen amid a flurry of activity in Congress. Those moves begandays after an abortion-rights leader, Ron Fitzsimmmons, admittedthat ``I lied through my teeth'' about how often and when so-called``partial birth'' abortions occur.
Democrats and Republicans alike have spent the week introducingcompeting legislation that would ban the procedure. A jointHouse-Senate hearing on the issue is set for Tuesday.
Clinton aides have been working with the office of the Senateminority leader, Thomas A. Daschle, to stake out a middle groundthat would appeal to Clinton, as well as to Democrats andRepublicans who favor abortion rights.
The goal is a bipartisan bill that does not brush too closelyagainst the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion and canwithstand legal challenges, aides say.
While the bill is close to being drafted, there still aredifferences over the wording for the women's health exception andover whether to make violation of the statute a criminal or civiloffense.
``We are threading a very small needle with this,'' said aDaschle aide who was involved in drafting the bill. ``We're doingeverything we can to write a meaningful and constitutionalprovision—that's our goal, and that's the president's goal,'' theaide said.
The 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade did not outlawlate-term abortions, but gave states the right to do so.Massachusetts and 40 other states have banned late-term abortions,with few exceptions.
Clinton has said consistently that he would sign a bill to banthis particular type of late-term abortion if it includedprotections for the mother's life and health. Some Democrats inCongress nearly lost their seat in the November election for sidingwith Clinton on the issue.
Banning the procedure ranks sixth on the list of Republicanpriorities in this session in Congress. GOP leaders proposeprohibiting not just the third-trimester abortions but alsosecond-trimester abortions as well, with no exception for themother's health. House Republicans have placed their bill on afast-track with plans for a floor vote by the Easter recess.
In a briefing with reporters this week, the White House presssecretary, Michael D. McCurry, signaled the administration'sinterest in getting ahead of the GOP and getting a bill to thepresident's desk that contains an exception for a woman's health.
``The president would willingly and gladly work with theCongress to fashion a measure that would meet that concern, whilebanning a procedure that most Americans, and the presidentincluded, consider abhorrent,'' he said.
Republicans have been emboldened by the comments of Fitzsimmons,executive director of the National Coalition for AbortionProviders, who said that late-term abortions were often performedon healthy women with healthy fetuses and were more common than hehad claimed.
Representative Charles T. Canady, a Republican from Florida whointroduced a bill this week to ban the procedure, said the Clintonadministration's efforts fall extremely short.
``The suggestion he is making would preserve every partial-birthabortion that might otherwise be performed. That's not acompromise,'' Canady said. ``I would rather pass no bill than passa bill that's a sham. I believe the president wants to have acompromise that in effect would gut the bill.''
Susan Cohen, senior public policy associate at the AlanGuttmacher Institute in Washington, which tracks the number ofabortions, said abortion opponents have seized the momentum fromthe other side because of Fitzsimmons's admission.
Still, she said, 99 percent of abortions occur within the first20 weeks of pregnancy and late-term abortions account for only 1percent of the 1.5 million abortions performed annually. But ``thepolitical damage is indisputable,'' she said.
Abortion-rights supporters are concerned that their allies inthe White House and on Capitol Hill are drafting legislation thatcould chip away at legalized abortion. Many say the exercise is togive congressional Democrats a vote to show they don't supportpartial-birth abortion.
``All of this is unnecessary,'' said Kate Michelman, presidentof the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Shenoted that states have the right to ban late-term abortions, andthat the procedure constitutes a small percentage of all abortionsperformed in the United States.
``In general, I believe Congress should not be legislating inthis area,'' Michelman said. ``To have the federal government takethis up, there's no end to how many federal statutes andrestrictions that would then affect women regardless of where theylive, how old they are, or their economic status. It's a badprecedent.''
c.1997 San Francisco Examiner
SAN FRANCISCO—If I were an intelligent, committed,anti- abortion activist, I would cringe every time Operation Rescuelaunched yet another offensive in the name of the ``pre-born.''
This headline-driven organization, predominantly male in itsleadership, repeatedly undermines rational dialogue on the abortionissue. Its modus operandus of hate-filled public spectacle servesonly to pervert the life-affirming dignity of thoughtful andreasoned abortion opponents.
Operation Rescue's latest grandstanding action—to bring ``Godback to school''—reached a dangerous level this week. Camped infront of public high schools in 100 U.S. cities, the anti-choicezealots treated teenagers to an Operation Rescue staple: Largecolor placards depicting bloody and dismembered fetuses.
``We have tried the school boards,'' said Operation RescueDirector Flip Benham. ``We have tried the courts. We have tried thelegislators, and now we are going to the schools to take them backand bring them home.''
Note the macho, war-like terminology: Taking back ``theschools'' as if they were villages that belonged to OperationRescue but were lost to enemy invaders.
Indeed, Operation Rescue's tactics have failed to persuadeschool boards, the courts and most legislators to join the group inits patented brand of dictated morality. So, in desperation, O.R.now targets public school adolescents for its graphicwe'll-do-anything-to-save-the-babies visual assaults.
Not surprising, many of the students who were quoted in newsstories about the demonstrations were horrified. One ninth-gradeDenver girl said: ``I think it's just sick to see something likethat. Seeing what those mothers are doing to their babies, it'sjust not something I would do.''
It is extremely likely that if huge color photographs of thebirth process itself were displayed for high school students, agood many would be sickened, and most of the girls would swear itis something they would never do.
Knowing the shock value of their posters—they are not designedto help people think—Operation Rescue officials never own up tothe deceptive manipulation of their propaganda. A reproduced photoof a rare, late-term abortion (or what O.R. says is an abortedfetus) represents all abortion. That most abortions are performedwhen the ``baby'' can be seen only beneath a microscope is a factO.R. refuses to acknowledge.
To Operation Rescuers, the abortion issue is not at all complex.To them, abortion is about unfeeling or phenomenally ignorant womenwho blithely rip off their own babies' arms and legs.
For years, the group has screamed this simple-minded lie outside family planning clinics and throughout the neighborhoods ofphysicians who perform abortions. They have screamed it to schoolboards, legislators and in the courts.
Feeling frustrated at the lack of converts there, they are nowscreaming it to public school students.
Many of these kids will be sickened, shocked, made to cry, givennightmares and inspired to embrace Operation Rescue's simple-mindedlies about abortion.
Nothing could make Operation Rescue happier. Its soldiers arenot fighting for thoughtful, rational, even prayerful decisionmaking. They believe that they own the truth and that their task isto make all the rest of us accept it.
Go back to SOCIOLOGY 260 -- Sociology of Marriage and the Family Page
If you have any questions or comments please email: