House Again Okays Ban on Partial-Birth Abortion--Impending Veto Highlights Need for Pro-Life President

By NRLC Federal Legislative Office

WASHINGTON (April 10) The U.S. House of Representatives has once again approved a bill to place a national ban on partial- birth abortions--but pro-life forces face an uphill battle to enact the bill over a promised veto by President Clinton.

Clinton's opposition to the bill is strongly shared by pro- abortion Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president. Pro-life Republican nominee- apparent George W. Bush says he would sign the ban.

The House approved the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act on April 5 by a vote of 287-141. (See roll call chart, page 26.) That was just one vote more than the two-thirds majority that will be needed to override the anticipated veto.

The Senate approved a similar bill (S. 1692) last October. (See November 1999 NRL News, page 23.) If all senators had been present to vote on that occasion, the margin of approval would have been 65-35--the highest level of support ever for the bill, but still two votes short of a two-thirds majority.

"With a pro-life president, we could ban partial-birth abortions without needing a two-to-one majority," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. "If elected president, Al Gore would continue the era of partial-birth abortion."

The next stop for the new bill is a conference committee, which will iron out differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. That panel will be controlled by pro-life lawmakers. The final bill must then be approved again by both houses before being sent to the White House. No timetable has been announced for these actions.

Background on Bill

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was originally introduced in 1995 by Congressman Charles Canady (R-Fl.), and was approved by Congress in 1996 and again in 1997. On both occasions, President Clinton vetoed the bills, after which the vetoes were overridden in the House but sustained in the Senate.

The chief Senate sponsor of the bill is Senator Rick Santorum (R- Pa.).

The bill would ban partial-birth abortion--defined as an abortion in which a living baby is partly delivered outside the mother's body before being killed--unless the method was ever necessary to save a mother's life. Anyone performing an illegal partial-birth abortion could be punished with up to two years' imprisonment and fined. In addition, in certain circumstances the bill authorizes private lawsuits against those who perform partial-birth abortions.

Supreme Court Case

On April 25, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case involving a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortions. A decision in that case is likely in June. (See the story on page 5 of this issue.)

In that case, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit objected to Nebraska's specific definition of "partial-birth abortion," which they thought could be applied to some procedures in which the baby is dismembered inside the mother.

Subsequently, to address that court's objection, the sponsors of the federal bill revised the bill to define partial-birth abortion as an abortion in which the abortionist intentionally " delivers some portion of an intact living fetus until the fetus is partially outside the body of the mother"--not just outside the womb--before killing the baby.

Frank Amendment

The House considered the bill under a procedure that allowed opponents to offer only one amendment. They chose an amendment crafted by pro-abortion Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to add an additional exception to authorize partial-birth abortions "to avert serious adverse long-term physical health consequences to the mother," in addition to the life-of-mother exception already in the bill.

Some pro-abortion lawmakers joined pro-life representatives in voting against this proposal, which failed 140-289.

The margin on final passage of the bill was only one vote more than the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto--a margin nine votes less than the last time the House considered the measure, in 1998.

The executive director of the National Abortion Federation, Vicki Saporta, subsequently issued a press release claiming that the nine-vote difference was "because legislators discovered that they have been misled by proponents of the ban into believing it would outlaw only one abortion procedure." (Pro-abortion groups have adopted the claim that the definition in the bill could somehow apply to methods of abortion other than partial-birth abortion.)

In reality, however, not a single House member who voted for the ban in 1998 switched to oppose it this year, but one previous opponent--Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tn.)--switched to support the bill. This year's lower margin was due to the results of the 1998 election, in which the pro-life movement lost some House seats, while slightly increasing strength in the Senate. (See November 17, 1998, NRL News, page 1.)

Among House members who were voting on the bill for the first time, 24 voted for it and 20 voted against it.

A nationwide poll of 1,000 citizens conducted March 31-April 2 by MarketFacts found 68% in favor of a ban on partial-birth abortion and 20% opposed. A January CNN/USA Today/ Gallup poll found 64% in favor of the ban and 31% opposed.

Hoyer-Greenwood Proposal

Many pro-abortion lawmakers complained that they were not allowed 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, the Hoyer-Greenwood bill would apply only after provable "viability" and thus would place no limits whatever on partial-birth abortions during the fifth and sixth months (20-26 weeks) of pregnancy--which is the period during which most partial-birth abortions are performed.

Moreover, the bill would allow abortions by any method, even in the seventh month or later, for "health" reasons--and in a March 16 letter to other House members, Hoyer and Greenwood admitted that "health" would include "mental health" reasons.

"Any lawmaker who says he supports the Hoyer-Greenwood bill thereby supports third-trimester abortions to enhance so-called mental health--by the admission of the sponsors themselves," commented NRLC's Johnson. "Unfortunately, journalists covering this debate have almost without exception failed to explain how expansive the Hoyer-Greenwood health exception really is."

Arguing against inclusion of a "health" exception, Congressman Todd Tiahrt (R-Ks.) told the House that the Kansas legislature in 1998 passed a bill to restrict partial-birth abortions, but included a "health" exception, which was interpreted to include " mental" health. As a result, "partial-birth abortions in the state of Kansas have risen by more than 300 percent, all of them because of the mental health exception," Tiahrt said.

Excerpts from Debate

The debate on the bill followed mostly familiar lines. Opponents of the bill objected to any restriction on partial-birth abortions before "viability," and insisted that even after " viability," abortions must be allowed for "health" reasons. Some also argued that "late-term" abortions are performed only in cases of medical necessity.

Opponents countered with statements by medical authorities that partial-birth abortion never serves a genuine medical purpose, including a 1997 letter from the American Medical Association (AMA) endorsing the federal ban, which said that partial-birth abortion is "not medically indicated" and is "a procedure we all agree is not good medicine." (More recently, the AMA has since decided not to endorse abortion-related bills that contain criminal penalties, as does HR 3660.)

"I have worked in neonatal intensive care units and I have seen firsthand with my eyes how premature babies respond to pain," said Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fl.), a physician. "When it is necessary to draw blood and needles are placed in their arms, I have seen them draw back, writhe in pain and cry out. Dragging an unborn baby, feet first, partially out of the womb is a brutal violation of the privacy of that child. But to then stab that baby in the back of the skull is, in my medical opinion, not only barbaric, it is excruciatingly painful for these poor, unfortunate souls."

Rep. Canady displayed a large color photograph taken during a procedure in which surgeons opened a mother's womb in order to correct a spinal malformation on her baby in the fifth month. (Most partial-birth abortions are performed in the 20-26-week period, from 4.5 to 6 months.)

"We can observe the arm of the child has been extended from the incision made in his mother's womb," Canady said in describing the photo. "He has reached out and grabbed the finger of the physician. . . . Can we say that a baby at this stage of development, this baby reaching out and grasping for life, should be denied protection against partial-birth abortion? Can we remain blind to the meaning of this tiny grasping human hand?"

Resources

An archive of documentation on the issue of partial-birth abortions is available at the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org. The document "Key Facts on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act" (www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/keyfactspba.htm) is a good summary on the issue. For more detailed information on disputed issues, see NRLC's extensively footnoted testimony to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees at http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/test.html