Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 22, 1993 TAG: 9301220139
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
ABORTION FOES SAY FIGHT MUST GO ON
These are grim days for the anti-abortion movement.For the first time in 12 years, opponents of legalized abortion do not have a sympathetic president in the White House. Many feel badly let down by a conservative Supreme Court.
Perhaps most of all, they are fighting the idea that the courts and As protesters pray at clinic, advocates contemplate fight that remains. B1. the political system reached a lasting consensus on abortion with the court cases and election of 1992, and that their side lost.
There is no surer sign of the altered political climate than President Clinton's resolve to use executive orders to reverse some important victories the anti-abortion forces won under Republican rule.
This turnaround will come only days after George Bush issued a proclamation declaring last Sunday as National Sanctity of Human Life Day to "call attention to the tragedy of abortion."
Thursday, Clinton's spokesman, George Stephanopoulos, suggested it would be logical to expect the president to lift the ban on abortion counseling at federally financed clinics today, the 20th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
Aides have said he may also reverse the ban on importing the French drug that induces abortion, RU-486, and the prohibition against federal financing of research using fetal tissue.
But as anti-abortion leaders mark the Roe anniversary with their annual march on Washington, many say they are adjusting to their fall from power. They say it will make them tougher; stronger at the grass roots; and more committed to the fundamentals of organizing, a skill that made their movement formidable in the first place.
"What had happened to some extent over the last four years is that people had gotten into the habit of letting George [Bush] do it," said Wanda Franz, president of the National Right to Life Committee. "We knew that George was going to veto things; we knew that he was going to take care of things. Now, they just have to get back to the business of pro-life grass-roots development. And that's what I see happening."
The anti-abortion leaders are delivering a message these days that is simple and oddly familiar, because it came from the other side for 12 years: Abortion extremists have seized control of the White House and are dangerously strong in the Congress.
Franz and her allies say they are focusing much of their fire on the Freedom of Choice Act, a priority of the National Abortion Rights Action League. That measure would forbid states from enacting a variety of restrictions on abortion, like a 24-hour waiting period. Clinton promised during the campaign that he would sign such a bill.
Anti-abortion leaders assert that such a measure is squarely at odds with public opinion, arguing most Americans consider such regulations to be utterly reasonable. Abortion-rights legislation, the anti-abortion leaders argue, would create the very kind of abortion on demand that people find deeply troublesome.