U.S. Bishops Unveil Campaign To Chip Away At Abortion Rights Catholic Leaders Target Research, Funding, Availability

Using the 23rd anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade ruling to step up their campaign against abortion, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Monday unveiled an intensive lobbying effort to weaken or strike down a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

Speaking from pulpits and in public forums from Boston to Pasadena, Calif., the bishops said they will push to ban all human embryo research, give medical schools and teaching hospitals the right not to teach abortion techniques, and to permit states for the first time to not fund abortion services that are funded by the federal government. Currently, states must cover all services the federal government allows.

The bishops also said they will seek to place the same ban on abortions in civilian hospitals that Congress imposed on overseas military hospitals. Abortions are prohibited at military hospitals except in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life is endangered. While that language is not as strong as the bishops want, they see it as an opening.

While bishops have raised many of the same issues in years past, 1996 is a presidential election year in which anti-abortion rights forces hope to have an impact.

In addition, unlike previous years, the bishops this year are moving to join in initiatives by a Republicancontrolled Congress. Congressional leaders have for the first time promised hearings on when life begins, and efforts are also under way to cast into law limitations on human embryo research that until now have been contained in less permanent presidential executive orders.

The opening salvos in the latest anti-abortion campaign were fired Monday as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops took out full page newspaper advertisements.

At the same time, they announced they have nearly put in place a computerized national database of voters opposed to abortion that will allow targeting of individual politicians in state and congressional districts. The bishops also said they are initiating a “rapid response” fax system to rebut “misstatements and distortions” by abortion-rights advocates.

In Washington, an estimated 60,000 people marched on the U.S. Supreme Court building to protest the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

As they demonstrated, however, the Supreme Court dealt a new blow to efforts to enact new abortion curbs. Without comment, the justices refused to let Pennsylvania set strict reporting rules that must be satisfied before Medicaid funds can be paid for abortions sought by victims of rape or incest or by women for whom giving birth would endanger their lives.