House Backs Clinic Abortion Counseling : Congress: The appropriations bill amendment would block funds needed to enforce a ban on such advice at federally financed centers.

Ignoring the clear threat of a presidential veto, the House on Wednesday voted to allow federally funded family planning clinics to continue abortion counseling.

The House action would block the funding needed for enforcement of a Bush Administration rule barring the clinics from providing such counseling. But the prospect of a veto left the ultimate outcome of the fight over the issue far from certain.

A provision to thwart the so-called gag rule was included in a $58.5-billion appropriations bill that passed 357 to 74 and was sent to the Senate without a direct challenge after anti-abortion forces backed away from a showdown. They did so in part because they conceded that they could not muster the majority vote needed to remove the abortion counseling provision from the measure. But they expressed confidence that they would have enough votes to sustain the expected veto over the abortion issue.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), one of the leaders of the anti-abortion coalition in the House, said: “We do not intend to offer a motion to strike (the provision allowing abortion counseling). Rather, we will wait until the bill comes back vetoed, as surely it will. We will have our vote on this for all to see.”

Because the anti-abortion forces decided against making Wednesday’s vote a test case, legislative leaders on both sides of the debate agreed that the tally on the overall bill gave no clear indication of how the expected future vote would fall on the abortion provision.

Although abortion rights advocates hailed Wednesday’s vote as a victory, several of them acknowledged that they now are short of the two-thirds majority required to override a veto. But the abortion rights advocates pledged an all-out lobbying effort to pull together a veto-proof majority.

Many Republicans with anti-abortion records oppose the Administration’s abortion counseling policy on free speech grounds.

In addition, the abortion rights advocates are hoping that political considerations will cause some traditionally anti-abortion lawmakers to shy away from opposing the move to allow continued abortion counseling.

Since Bush took office 2 1/2 years ago, Congress has been unable to achieve the two-thirds vote necessary to override any of his vetoes.

The ban on abortion counseling at federally funded clinics was first proposed by the Ronald Reagan Administration in 1988, but court challenges blocked its implementation. The Bush Administration moved to enforce the ban after its constitutionality was upheld by a U.S. Supreme Court decision last month. That set the stage for Wednesday’s House action.

The provision that would allow continued abortion counseling is likely to be ratified in the Senate, where abortion rights supporters have prevailed by wide majorities on similar issues in the past.

With neither side seeing hope of compromise on the legislation that would satisfy Bush, an emotional confrontation between Congress and the White House seems inevitable later this summer.

The House measure containing the abortion counseling provision is an appropriations bill for the Health and Human Services, Labor and Education departments.

Opponents of the counseling ban charged that it would be an intolerable intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship and would deny full medical information to patients of family planning clinics.

“This is a family planning vote,” Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) said. Addressing her opponents directly, she said: “Your side has collapsed on this issue, and you know it.”

Some of the most politically potent opposition, however, came from members of Bush’s own Republican Party.

Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), who opposes abortion, said that on the counseling issue, “the President is trying to rule by holding his breath and turning blue, saying it will be his way or no way. The President should negotiate . . . and rise above narrow, single-issue politics.”

On a related issue, a provision that would require clinics to notify one parent of a minor child seeking abortion counseling was removed from the bill when Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) objected to it on procedural grounds.

And despite another Bush veto threat, the House passed an appropriations bill for the District of Columbia that would allow the local government to finance abortions with its own tax money.

The President vetoed similar legislation last year, and Congress then passed another bill that banned the District of Columbia from using its own funds as well as federal funds for abortions.