PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday, April 5, 2000
House Passes Partial-Birth Abortion Ban –Impending Veto Highlights Need for Pro-Life President
WASHINGTON – The U.S. House today approved the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
(HR 3660) by a lopsided vote of 287-141, one vote over a veto-proof majority. The Senate already approved the bill last October 21, by a vote of 63-34 -- two votes short of the two-thirds majority that will be required to override President Clinton's anticipated veto.
A January CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 64% of the public favored a ban on partial-birth abortions. In a partial-birth abortion, a living baby is delivered feet first, except for the head, before being killed. The ban applies unless the method is needed to save a mother's life.
"With a pro-life president, we could ban this brutal practice in which living babies are pulled partly out of the mother before being killed, without needing a two-thirds majority," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). "As president, Al Gore would continue the era of partial-birth abortion."
Some pro-abortion lawmakers unsuccessfully pressed for a vote on an alternative bill (HR 2149), proposed by Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.), which they claimed would "prohibit late-term abortions." However, in a March 16 letter to House members, Hoyer and Greenwood admitted that their proposal would allow abortions during the seventh month and later for "mental health." Moreover, the Hoyer-Greenwood bill would place no limits whatever on partial-birth abortions during in the fifth and sixth months (20-26 weeks) of pregnancy -- which is the period during which most partial-birth abortions are performed.
On April 25, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral
arguments regarding a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortions. A
three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit objected to Nebraska's specific
definition of "partial-birth abortion," which they thought could be applied to
some procedures involving dismemberment of the baby inside the mother.
Subsequently, to address that court's objection, the sponsors of the federal
bill revised the definition of partial-birth abortion to definitively exclude
any such interpretation. Thus, HR 3660 defines partial-birth abortion as an
abortion in which the abortionist "deliberately and intentionally vaginally
delivers some portion of an intact living fetus until the fetus is partially
outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that
the person knows will kill the fetus."
For further information, contact
Laura Echevarria, NRLC Media Relations, NRLCMedia@aol.com; or Douglas Johnson, NRLC
Legislative Director, fax (202) 347-3668, e-mail: Legfederal@aol.com.