THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 2, 1995 TAG: 9511020549
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
By a lopsided margin, the House voted Wednesday to make a rarely used technique to end late-term pregnancies a crime, the first attempt by Congress to limit abortion procedures since the Supreme Court legalized them more than two decades ago.
The 288-139 vote was limited to a highly specialized procedure, known medically as intact dilation and evacuation, which is performed only after 20 weeks of gestation. Although even the most ardent abortion foes concede that a challenge to the legality of abortions is years away, the vote put Congress on that path.
Lawmakers on both sides of the issue said the vote also marked a shift in the anti-abortion forces' strategy in the wrenching battle over abortion.
``This is the first time that we have had a vote on the legalization'' of an abortion procedure, said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., a leading House abortion opponent. He said anti-abortion lawmakers would ``begin to focus on the methods and declare them to be illegal.''
Under the measure, doctors who perform the procedure would be subject to fines or up to two years in prison and to civil suits. Physicians could escape penalties if they prove they ``reasonably believed'' the technique was needed to save the woman's life and ``no other procedure would suffice for that purpose.''
A bill similar to the House measure is pending in the Senate, where the minority leader, Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota, said he believed there was ``a significant degree of support.'' Some Senate Democrats vowed Wednesday to lead a filibuster, if needed, to defeat the legislation.
The White House said that if the bill reached President Clinton's desk, he would veto it because it ``fails to provide for consideration of the need to preserve the life and health of the mother.''
During Wednesday's debate, supporters of the legislation used graphic drawings and went into great detail to depict the procedure, which anti-abortion forces call a partial-birth abortion:
A woman's cervix is widened and the fetus is removed feet-first until only the head remains in the woman's uterus. A doctor may crush the fetus' skull or suck out brain tissue and fluids to allow the head to pass through the cervix.
Only two physicians, one in Ohio and the other in California, routinely perform the procedure, according to the National Abortion Federation, which represents doctors, nurses and centers that provide abortion services. Of the 1.5 million abortions done each year, the group estimated only about 450 are done in this manner.
Abortion-rights advocates said the method is used only in cases when severe birth defects - such as anencephaly, the absence of brain development - or conditions threatening the woman's life are discovered too late in pregnancy to use most other techniques.
A spokeswoman for the National Abortion Federation said the procedure had value because the fetus is removed intact and can be used for fetal pathology and genetic counseling.
``These are people who want their children and can find out what went wrong,'' said Susan Dudley, the spokeswoman. ``This helps if they want to try another pregnancy.''
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, meanwhile, issued a statement assailing ``any action by Congress that would supersede the medical judgment of trained physicians and that would criminalize medical procedures that may be necessary to save the life of a woman.''
But supporters of the legislation, including the National Right to Life Committee and the Christian Coalition, argue that the procedure is used to perform elective abortions.
``This bill is a giant step forward,'' said Brian Lopina, the Christian Coalition's legislative affairs director. He said the procedure, ``when described to most citizens, leaves them revolted.''
The vote came after an hour of charged debate, where the names of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and Dr. Jack Kevorkian were interspersed with images of drive-by shootings and police officer killings.
``You wouldn't take a coyote, a mangy raccoon, and treat an animal this way,'' said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill.
Arguing that the fetus would be a protected life if its head were outside its mother's body, Rep. Charles T. Canady, R-Fla., the bill's prime sponsor, said: ``The difference between the partial-birth abortion procedure and homicide is a mere three inches.''
Outraged abortion-rights advocates said the graphic depictions of the procedure skewed the debate and the vote.
``We let the issue become, `is this revolting or is it not revolting?' It is. It's gut-wrenchingly offensive. It's horrifying,'' said Connecticut Rep. Nancy Johnson, one of only two GOP lawmakers to speak out against the ban. ``But they won because by the time the vote happened, they had defined it as an unacceptable procedure, without considering the circumstances.''
Those circumstances, Johnson said, are that in most, if not all, late-term abortions, the fetus is so abnormal that it is doomed not to live long, if at all. And, were it to die in utero, the fetus could begin to decompose and endanger the life of the mother.
Further, Johnson said the law only allows late-term abortions when the life or health of the mother is at stake, not, as ban proponents argued, at any time for any reason.
``This is the safest way of dealing medically with terrible circumstances,'' said Johnson, whose husband is an obstetrician. ``The moderates were silent, because it's an anguishing issue. And they didn't ask the questions I asked - what are the alternatives? They're no better.''
In a statement issued after the vote, Rep. Owen B. Pickett of Virginia Beach, a Democrat, condemned the legislation as an assault on the authority of states to regulate medical care.
``On one hand, the majority wants to return all power and regulation to the states,'' he said. ``But when it comes to an arcane medical procedure, it abandons the philosophy of state's rights to pander to the demands of the radical right.'' MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The Washington Post,
Knight-Ridder News Service, The New York Times and staff writers Denise
Watson and Dale Eisman.
ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
HOW THEY VOTED
A ``yes'' vote is a vote to make the procedure a crime.
Herbert H. Bateman, R-Va. Yes
Owen B. Pickett, D-Va. No
Robert C. Scott, D-Va. No
Norman Sisisky, D-Va. Yes
Eva Clayton, D-N.C. No
Walter Jones Jr., R-N.C. Yes
by CNB