Panel Votes to Revive Abortion Counseling

Moving toward a showdown with President Bush, the House Appropriations Committee approved a measure Thursday that would effectively overturn an Administration-backed rule barring abortion counseling at federally funded family planning clinics.

By a 35-20 vote, a bipartisan coalition on the Appropriations Committee amended a bill containing funds for labor, health and human services, and education to prohibit the Administration from spending money to implement the ban on abortion counseling. Bush has vowed to veto any such legislation.

Abortion-rights advocates, who celebrated the vote in the halls outside the packed committee room, said the larger-than-expected victory shows that they are nearing a “veto-proof” two-thirds majority in the House. The full chamber is scheduled to take up the measure next week.

The panel’s action was considered an early test of legislative sentiment regarding a May 23 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the Administration regulation forbidding family planning clinics to inform pregnant women that abortion is a legal option. Opponents contend that many clinics will choose to forgo federal funds and simply shut down.

“Can the government withhold that information and lie to that woman about her constitutional rights?” asked Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.), the amendment’s sponsor. “People have to be told the truth--not part of it, all of it.”

Citing the support of the American Medical Assn. and other health care organizations, Porter derided the counseling ban as “a code of politically correct speech for doctors and a mandate to commit malpractice.”

The National Right to Life Committee, however, maintains that the regulation is needed to ensure that federal funds allocated under the family planning program are spent to promote contraception and not to advocate abortion. Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) said that a woman who goes to Planned Parenthood or other federally funded clinics for counseling “usually walks out with an abortion.”

But opponents of the Administration policy were joined by several Republicans who have been anti-abortion stalwarts. One, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), said he wrestled with the issue for weeks before deciding during Thursday’s debate to vote to reverse the ban.

“I don’t view this as a pro-life, pro-choice issue,” Lewis said later. “I feel very, very strongly about life, and I’m very, very concerned that we make certain that a woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy has every bit of information available to her.”

William H. Hamilton Jr., Washington director of Planned Parenthood, said the committee vote indicates that opponents of the “gag rule” have a good shot at overriding an expected Bush veto. But Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the Right to Life Committee, disagreed.

“It would appear that Porter will be able to muster a majority to sustain that language (in the House), but not the two-thirds that he’ll require ultimately,” Johnson said. “We’re not happy about the events in the committee today but we are optimistic about the final outcome.”

The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee voted earlier this month to lift the abortion counseling restriction. The tally was 12 to 5.

Earlier Thursday, Weber sought unsuccessfully to add a provision to Porter’s amendment to require notification of parents of minors who were given abortion referrals. Porter referred to Weber’s proposal as a “poison pill” that would open his amendment to a House floor challenge on procedural grounds.