Abortion Foe Criticizes Batt On Consent Veto

Twenty-four hours after focusing his wrath on the state Senate, anti-abortion activist Dennis Mansfield unleashed his vitriol on Republican Gov. Phil Batt for vetoing the parental consent abortion bill.

“The governor could have taken a strong leadership stand,” the founder of the Idaho Family Forum declared on Tuesday. “He went out of his way to slap the pro-life community in the face.”

Mansfield and others promised retribution at the polls this year, saying that anti-abortion voters will be told in 600,000 election guides about “who was with them on parental consent and who was not.”

He wants a bill identical to the one originally pushed through the House. The GOP-dominated state Senate found it constitutionally flawed and eventually replaced it over the objections of Mansfield and others with the one Batt vetoed on Monday.

Also on Tuesday, the anti-abortion forces again tried to maneuver Republican U.S. Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, the front-runner to succeed the retiring governor, into the position of endorsing the demands Batt found unacceptable.

“This squarely falls on the shoulders of his successor,” Mansfield said. “This issue is before us for the 1998 election. It’s either lead, follow or get out of the way.”

“We are going to continue to push and push for the abolition of abortion,” Mansfield promised, predicting the procedure would be eliminated within the next generation.

Neither Batt nor Kempthorne were willing to publicly respond.