Late-Term Abortions Remain Legal Senate Fails To Override Clinton’s Veto Of Bill Banning Partial-Birth Procedure
The highly charged issue of late-term abortions officially was elevated to campaign status Thursday when the Senate sustained President Clinton’s veto of a bill to ban the procedure.
Advocates on both sides of the debate say they expect the vote and Clinton’s veto to be an issue in the presidential race and various congressional campaigns as Democrats and Republicans try to portray each other’s positions as extreme.
Thursday, the Senate failed by a 57-41 vote to get the two-thirds majority needed to overrride Clinton’s April veto of a ban on a specific late-term abortion procedure, despite three prominent abortion-rights supporters changing their positions.
Last week, the House voted narrowly to override the veto by a 285-137 vote, which was just four more votes than the two-thirds required.
“If our Republican colleagues were serious about this difficult and complex issue, they would have included a full exception for the life of the mother … and they also would have included an exception for serious threats to the health of the mother,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said. “This bill is too harsh and too extreme in both of these areas.”
But Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah appealed to his colleagues to support the ban, calling late-term abortion a “shocking procedure that comes very disturbingly close to infanticide.”
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-rights research and advocacy group which has tracked this issue, 1 percent of the 1.5 million abortions performed annually occur in the 21st week of pregnancy or later. Only .04 percent occur 26 weeks or later.
“Any way you look at it, it’s a tiny number, whether you are looking at past 20 weeks or past 26 weeks,” said Susan Cohen, a senior public policy associate at the institute.
The procedure, medically known as intact dilation and evacuation, involves the partial delivery of the fetus through the birth canal feet-first. The brains then are suctioned out and the skull collapses. The procedure is used in rare occasions to protect the mother’s health.
If the ban had succeeded, it would have been the first time in two decades that a form of abortion had been made illegal.
The Senate vote took place amid frenetic lobbying by both sides, and emotions ran high on the Senate floor. Senators dueled with props, some showing charts and graphics to illustrate the procedure, while others offered smiling babies in photographs of healthy families to make their point. xxxx HOW THEY VOTED How the region’s senators voted in the 57-41 roll call by which the Senate voted to sustain President Clinton’s veto of a bill banning partial-birth abortions. On this vote, a “yes” vote was a vote to override the president’s veto. Idaho: Craig (R) yes; Kempthorne (R) yes. Montana:Baucus (D) no; Burns (R) yes. Washington: Gorton (R) yes; Murray (D) no.