Senate’s Abortion Bill Rejection Sets Stage For Partial-Birth Battle

After more than eight hours of impassioned debate, the Senate rejected two proposals Thursday that would have rolled back abortion rights by outlawing a broad category of abortions except to save the life of the woman and, to varying degrees, protect her health.

The Senate rejected the proposals because a majority of senators said they did not believe that the bills would do what they declared they would do - ban all abortions after a fetus is able to survive outside the womb. They said the exceptions were so broad that the bans would be meaningless.

The defeats set the stage for consideration next week of a bill to ban one particular late-term procedure, known by its opponents as “partial birth” abortion.

That measure, which the House has already passed, is expected to be approved by the Senate. President Clinton, who vetoed a similar ban last year, has said he will veto it again. Whether the Senate can muster the votes to override a veto is uncertain. Abortion opponents have suggested that they may try the override vote just before next year’s midterm elections, increasing the political pressure on members of Congress to vote for the ban and trying to isolate Clinton as out of step with mainstream America on the issue of abortion.

Clinton supported both of the measures that failed Thursday. The first, offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., lost 72-28. The second, by Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, failed 64-36.

Thursday’s debate underscored how the political environment has changed as longtime supporters of abortion rights argued for measures that would limit abortion rights.

Abortion opponents suggested that the turnabout came because the measures were hoaxes including so many loopholes that they would not really limit abortions at all.

But abortion-rights supporters were divided. Some were convinced that the Daschle measure in particular was a retreat on abortion - limiting rights guaranteed by the Supreme Court - and would be the first step in a continuous reassessment of the extent to which the public finds abortion acceptable. Advances in technology are likely to intensify the political debate further as fetal deformities are discovered sooner and as fetuses are kept alive at ever earlier stages.

Equally remarkable in the current debate was how few abortions the bills would actually have affected. For all the furor over the bills, they would apply to .0002 percent of the 1.5 million abortions performed annually in this country, according to statistics cited from 1992 by the American Medical Association.

The Democratic proposals would have applied after a fetus was able to live outside the womb - generally at 23 to 26 weeks of pregnancy. Only 1 percent of all abortions are performed after the 21st week; and .0002 percent - or 320 abortions in 1992 - occur after the 26th week.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., said that in 1995, Maine recorded just one abortion after the 20th week.

As for the proposed ban on partial-birth abortion, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, the lead sponsor, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., has acknowledged that it would not prevent a single abortion because doctors can use another method.