Abortion Foes Move To Cut Cash Measure Would Reinstate Policy Started By Reagan
Renewing what has become a perennial fight, the House approved an amendment on Thursday that would prohibit the flow of federal money to international programs that provide abortions or promote them as a method of family planning.
The measure would reinstate a policy that was started by President Ronald Reagan and continued by President George Bush, but became one of President Clinton’s first targets.
The amendment - sponsored by Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., who is one of the leading abortion opponents in Congress - was part of the $12.3 billion spending bill for foreign operations that the House passed on Thursday, 375 to 49.
Smith’s amendment as passed 234 to 191, with 192 Republicans and 42 Democrats voting for it. Twenty-nine Republicans, 161 Democrats and 1 independent voted against it.
The Senate has already approved its version of the foreign aid bill, which does not include the anti-abortion provisions. Twice in the last two years, in the face of threatened filibusters from supporters of abortion rights, the Senate has defeated efforts to reinstate the Reagan-Bush policy.
The president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Gloria Feldt, called the House vote an outrage, and added: “Family planning should not be held hostage to anti-abortion politics. Chris Smith’s prohibition will cause more abortions and more deaths of women. I think it is shameful that Congress would go along with this.”
On the surface, the wrangling over the amendment was a rematch in the continuing fight between anti-abortion forces and lawmakers who support abortion rights.
But there was an even more powerful political undercurrent in Thursday’s debate: an intramural fight between conservatives and moderates within the Republican majority over policy and legislative direction.
Many of the conservatives within the House Republican conference have complained bitterly in recent weeks that Speaker Newt Gingrich and other leaders, prodded by moderates, have abandoned the fight for many of the party’s core values on issues like abortion and cutting government spending.
“We are not going to give in on this one,” Smith told reporters after the vote, “and the leadership is strongly behind us.”
Smith said Gingrich had pledged not to back down on the abortion amendment in the foreign operations bill. If necessary, Smith said, the speaker would withdraw his support of a plan under which the United States would pay its back dues to the United Nations.
Smith’s amendment would reinstate the rule.
The measure prohibits the United States from giving assistance to population programs or organizations that perform abortions in foreign countries, violate the abortion laws of foreign countries or lobby for changes in such laws.
The Smith amendment makes exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the pregnant women is endangered.
It also would prohibit donating money for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities unless the president certifies that the organization has ceased all activity in China, which has been criticized because of government-sanctioned programs of forced sterilization.