‘Partial-Birth Abortion’ Struck Down In House, But Senate Vote Looms Senate Unlikely To Override Veto Of Bill To Outlaw Technique

The House voted Thursday to overturn President Clinton’s five-month-old veto of legislation that would outlaw a contentious technique to end pregnancies in their late stages, putting the emotionally charged issue in the political spotlight just six weeks before Election Day.

The 285 to 137 vote - four more votes than needed for the two-thirds majority required - was a largely symbolic victory for anti-abortion forces, as the Senate is unlikely to muster a similar majority to enact the measure into law over Clinton’s objections when it votes next week.

“I suspect it will be hard to override it,” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Thursday.

But the vote’s political significance is much larger, as it allows Republicans to portray Clinton as an extremist on the question of the abortion procedure, which polls shows is opposed by a large majority of Americans. On the campaign trail, GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole has pounded away at his support for the ban and Clinton’s veto of it.

The measure would outlaw what it calls a “partial-birth abortion,” the term anti-abortion forces have given a procedure in which a woman’s birth canal is widened and the fetus is removed feet first until only the head remains in the woman’s uterus. A doctor may collapse the fetus’s skull so that the head can be drawn through the birth canal.

The bill would subject doctors who perform the procedure to fines and up to two years in prison. In addition, it would allow the fetus’s father and, if the woman is younger than 18, the woman’s parents to sue the doctor. The only exception would be if no other procedure would save the woman’s life.

Clinton vetoed the measure in April, saying he would accept the legislation if it included an exception to protect the woman’s health, a term the Supreme Court has held includes “all factors - physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman’s age - relevant to the well-being of the patient.”

That language is so broad that it “makes any ban virtually meaningless,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., one of Congress’ most ardent abortion foes.

“President Clinton did all he could to make sure partial-birth abortions keep happening,” said Rep. Charles T. Canady, R-Fla., the bill’s sponsor. “President Clinton went too far. With this veto, he showed all of us just how extreme he is on the issue of abortion.”

Ralph Reed, director of the Christian Coalition, said the vote should bolster Dole’s campaign. “This demonstrates that President Clinton’s true vulnerability is not on the economy, but on social and character issues,” he said. “Abortion has always been thought of as a weakness for Republicans, but this indicates it is a weakness for the Democrats.”

Thursday’s vote served another important political purpose for Republicans by bringing anti-abortion GOP lawmakers and many longtime supporters of support abortion rights together on the same side, opposing the abortion procedure.