ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 11, 1996 TAG: 9604110053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and The Washington Post
Guaranteeing a fierce election-year debate over abortion, President Clinton vetoed a bill Wednesday that would outlaw a rarely used technique to end pregnancies in their late stages.
Clinton struck down the bill in an emotional ceremony where five women who have undergone such abortions spoke tearfully about the experience and the fetal disorders that led to their decisions.
Clinton said the procedure is a ``potentially lifesaving, certainly health-saving'' measure for ``a small but extremely vulnerable group of women and families in this country, just a few hundred a year.''
``This is not about the pro-choice, pro-life debate,'' Clinton said. ``This is not a bill that should have ever been injected into that.''
Clinton's veto Wednesday follows an unbroken line of actions as president to support the abortion rights movement. By contrast, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., Clinton's likely presidential opponent, voted for the ban on the procedure and though occasionally wavering on the details, has been an opponent of abortion rights, although not an activist on the issue, and supporter of a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
The House approved the measure by a veto-proof margin of 286-129, but the vote in the Senate, 54-44, was well short of the two-thirds needed to override a veto. It was unclear Wednesday whether either house would try for an override to further emphasize differences with Clinton.
Congress does not appear to have the votes to override the president but the issue is sure to spill over into the presidential campaign, where abortion opponents vow they will make Clinton pay for his veto.
Abortion opponents said the procedure, dubbed a ``partial birth'' abortion, is particularly gruesome, sometimes carried out after the fetus is pulled by the legs from the birth canal.
The technique ``blurs the line between abortion and infanticide,'' Dole said. Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition said, ``It will be very hard, if not impossible, for Bill Clinton to look Roman Catholic and evangelical voters in the eye and ask for their support in November.''
Standing by Clinton in the Roosevelt Room, Vikki Stella of Naperville, Ill., said she had no other choice. ``I didn't make the decision for my child to die. God made the decision for my child to die. I had to make the decision to take him off life support.''
Doctors said her unborn son's cranium was filled with fluid and no brain tissue.
Coreen Costello of Agoura, Calif., told Clinton she had her unborn child baptized. ``There will always be someone missing in our family - and that was Katherine Grace,'' she said. ``She was dying inside my womb.''
Tammy Watts of Tempe, Ariz., showed Clinton footprints taken from her unborn child.
The bill was the first measure to ban a specific abortion procedure since the 1973 Supreme Court decision granting women the right to abortion.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB