Abortion Hearing Reveals Plenty Of Rancor, Few Facts

For nearly five hours, lawmakers and witnesses argued in a tense hearing Tuesday over what critics call partial-birth abortion, with virtually no meeting of the minds on a subject in which facts remain elusive.

In first full congressional airing of the issue this year, the two sides agreed on almost nothing, what the procedure should be called, the reasons it is performed, when it is performed and whether it should be performed.

The hearing was also marked by bitter personal exchanges, including one in which Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., called the abortion-rights proponents at the witness table “very hardened, very cold and very callous” and said they had “become so blinded by legalisms and legality and process that you really have developed, I’m sad to say, a moral blind spot.”

In response, Renee Chelian, president of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, told Barr, “I hope to God I never ever get to that moral high ground that you are on where you can sit and look at another person and judge them.”

The House Judiciary Committee is to vote today on a measure that would ban the procedure except to save the life of the woman. It would also impose on the doctor a maximum penalty of $250,000 in fines and two years in prison. And it would hold anyone liable who assisted.

The full House is to vote next week, and the Senate by the end of the month.

Both houses are expected to pass the ban, as they did last year, and send it to President Clinton. Clinton has indicated that he will again veto the measure because it does not provide an exception for protecting a woman’s health.

Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who heads the House Judiciary Committee, opened with a personal elegy on pain and how “man visits pain on fellow men.” Describing the abortion procedure, Hyde said: “You could not execute a convicted murderer by jamming scissors in the back of the neck.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said the bill was unconstitutional because, contrary to Supreme Court rulings, it would not allow the procedure to protect the health of the woman.

Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, said: “The fundamental issue is whether Congress and politicians and government officials should be dictating medical practice or medical procedures. Also what’s at issue is, of course, not a small matter: women’s constitutional right to privacy and the protection of women’s health.”

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., disagreed. Not debating the procedure, he said, would let “the most barbaric doctors” make these decisions, which is “to abandon moral standards in a civilized society.”