Clinton Vetoes Ban On Abortion Procedure Bill Would Have Stopped Rarely Used Late-Term Operation

Moving the issue of abortion to the front burner of the presidential campaign, President Clinton vetoed a controversial bill Wednesday that would have outlawed a medical technique used to terminate a small number of late-term pregnancies.

In an emotional ceremony at the White House, Clinton vetoed the bill approved by the Republican-controlled Congress as several women at his side testified tearfully about why they had been forced to have abortions in the last stages of their pregnancies.

“This is not about the pro-choice, pro-life debate,” Clinton said. Rather, he said, it is about a “potentially lifesaving, certainly health-saving technique” used by “a small but extremely vulnerable group of women and families in this country - just a few hundred a year.”

Even though 74 Democrats voted for the ban in the House, Congress does not appear to have the votes to override the veto, which struck at the heart of what remains one of the nation’s most divisive social issues.

Polls show that most Americans favor a woman’s right to an abortion, but some surveys indicate that large numbers also favor placing limits on its use as a method of birth control. Republican strategists hope to make Clinton vulnerable on the issue by portraying him as unwilling to support any limits, even in the last stages of pregnancy.

Moving quickly to make the veto a campaign issue, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the presumptive Republican nominee, said Clinton “has rejected a very modest and bipartisan measure reflecting the values of a great majority of Americans. He instead embraced the extreme position of those who support abortion at any time, at any place and for any reason.”

Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said that throughout his presidency, Clinton “has taken every measure to ensure that abortions are far from rare. He supports abortion on demand, for any reason, at any time in pregnancy, with no limitation or regulation by the states.”

In the procedure, called intact dilation and extraction, all but the head of a fetus is delivered through the vagina. Before the fetus’s head passes through the cervix, however, a catheter is inserted at the base of the skull and the contents are suctioned out.

According to opponents of the legislation, most such procedures are performed on women who wanted a child but felt that they had to end the pregnancy because the fetus had a severe abnormality or their health was seriously jeopardized.

Ralph Reed, executive director of the influential Christian Coalition, said Clinton “has done more today than jeopardize the lives of unborn children - he has jeopardized his own chances of re-election.”

By allowing what he called the “systematic execution” of a fetus in the birth canal, Reed said that Clinton has “disappointed and deeply offended one of the largest voting blocs in the electorate.”

The campaign for and against the ban has been characterized by especially harsh charges and countercharges.

Graphic illustration

Supporters labeled the technique a “partial birth abortion.” At one point, they distributed graphic illustrations showing a fully formed fetus being drawn from the uterus by a doctor’s forceps.

Outraged opponents called the illustrations deceptive, arguing that the fetuses on which the procedures are used are hardly healthy but instead are severely deformed. They also noted that 99 percent of all abortions were performed during the first half of a pregnancy, and that only 500 out of the approximately 1.3 million abortions each year involve the controversial procedure.

“The president has chosen compassion and concern for families facing medical tragedies over the cynical election-year ploy of the politicians advancing this legislation,” said Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

‘God made the decision’

Standing next to Clinton at the White House ceremony Wednesday was Coreen Costello, a Southern California woman who described how she had her unborn child baptized before undergoing the procedure. “There will always be someone missing in our family - and that was Katherine Grace,” she said. “She was dying inside my womb.”

Vikki Stella of Naperville, Ill., said she underwent the procedure only after doctors told her that her unborn son’s cranium was filled with fluid and no brain tissue. “I didn’t make the decision for my child to die,” she said. “God made the decision for my child to die. I had to make the decision to take him off life support.”

Clinton said that when he first heard about the procedure, he thought he would support a ban against it. However, he said, “I came to understand that this is a rarely used procedure, justifiable as a last resort when doctors judge it necessary to save a woman’s life or to avert serious health consequences to her.”

Clinton had urged Congress to approve an exemption for cases to protect the health of the mother. But the version approved by Congress said the procedure could only be used if the life of the mother was threatened.

The bill would have allowed Congress for the first time to dictate what kinds of abortion procedures doctors could use, even when taxpayer funds were not involved.

That prospect had mobilized a range of medical and civil liberties groups against the ban. “The college finds very disturbing any action by Congress that would supersede the medical judgment of trained physicians that would criminalize medical procedures that may be necessary to save the life of a woman,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

First since Roe vs. Wade

The American Civil Liberties Union characterized the vetoed legislation Wednesday as “flagrantly unconstitutional.”

“This highly dangerous bill represents a severe threat to all women’s reproductive rights,” said Janet Gallagher, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “The passage of this bill marked the first time that Congress has voted to ban a type of abortion since the historic Roe vs. Wade decision legalized the right to choose more than 20 years ago.”