House Expected to Outlaw Rare Abortion Procedure

In the most direct congressional assault yet on the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, the GOP-dominated House this week is expected to ban a rare, but gruesome, procedure associated with late-term abortions.

The proposal would, for the first time, assert federal authority to ban a specific, established medical procedure. The bill, which faces stiffer opposition in the Senate, also would prescribe punishment of as much as two years in prison for physicians who perform so-called partial-birth abortions.

“This begins the debate on the violence of the [abortion] methods,” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), a co-sponsor of the bill. “We expose the dirty secret of the abortion rights movement.”

Although the measure has more than 160 bipartisan co-sponsors, a number of moderate Republicans are lining up to argue against it when the House begins debate on the issue, either tonight or Thursday.

There is no suspense, however, over the outcome. “We know we’re going to lose,” acknowledged one abortion rights activist. “The only question is by what margin.”

“The outlook is very grim,” Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) said in agreement.

A partial-birth abortion is typically performed when a woman’s life is in danger or a fetus is deformed and not expected to survive. The procedure requires a physician to extract a fetus, feet first, from the womb and through the birth canal until all but its head is exposed. Then the tips of surgical scissors are thrust into the base of the fetus’s skull, a suction catheter is inserted through the opening and the brain is removed.

Those who favor the procedure argue that it is safer than other alternatives, such as inducing labor or Cesarean-section.

Critics do not agree with the safety issue. They also call the procedure murder and say that other methods of terminating very late pregnancies are more humane.

“The difference between the partial-birth abortion procedure and homicide is a mere three inches,” said Rep. Charles T. Canady (R-Fla.), the bill’s author and chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution. He was referring to the practice of leaving the baby’s head in the birth canal during the procedure.

Anti-abortion forces are expected to win handily in the House and are thought to have enough support to muster the two-thirds majority they would need to override any presidential veto. President Clinton supports abortion rights.

With the House a lost cause to abortion rights advocates, they are working overtime to line up the 41 votes they would need to stall the issue in the Senate by means of a filibuster.

The House action will focus attention on an incendiary topic that has simmered with little notice for much of the year--even though the Republican-dominated chamber has added an array of limits on abortion rights to various appropriations bills. Among those are provisions that would:

* Allow states to refuse to fund Medicaid payments for abortions even in cases of rape and incest.

* Bar federal employees from buying insurance with abortion coverage.

* Prohibit federally funded abortions at federal prisons.

* Overturn Clinton’s executive order that allowed women in the armed services to pay for abortions with their own funds at military bases abroad.

* Ban funding to international organizations that provide abortion-related services.

Opponents are also hoping to derail those provisions in the Senate.

House debate over partial-birth abortions is scheduled to last for three hours and is certain to be steeped in acrimony.

Although Republicans like few things better than keeping the government out of the personal lives of citizens, Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) said the government is right to step into this arena because “this is not abortion. This is murder.”

Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a family practice physician, maintained that it is safer and more humane to induce labor than to perform the late-term abortion procedure.

“This is an unnecessary and unacceptable procedure,” he said, disparaging it as time-saving and malicious.

But the bill’s opponents said that there are cases when no other option is preferable, for a variety of reasons.

One opponent, Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), a close associate of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), said that Canady’s proposal would set “a disturbing precedent” of federal intrusion.

“It would be an outrage for Congress to compound the tragedy that a very small number of women and men must face in having to deal with late-term crises in pregnancy by denying a woman what may be the safest means of abortion,” Johnson said.

“For Congress to respect so little the truly terrible decision that some must face would be to dishonor our beliefs in individual integrity on which democracy rests,” she said.

Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.), another Republican opponent of the bill, conceded that the gruesome nature of the procedure will make it easier for members to vote for the ban.

“But if members can understand that it’s [an] important [procedure], they wouldn’t vote for this bill,” he said in an interview.

Schroeder acknowledged that “it’s not really hard to . . . gross people out,” given the nature of the procedure. Offering an analogy, she said that the details of even a hip replacement can be revolting.

The American Medical Assn.’s legislative council has recommended that the nation’s largest doctors’ organization endorse the bill, but the AMA’s board of trustees declined to take a position.

The 38,000-member California Medical Assn. strongly opposes Canady’s bill, saying the measure would “create an unwarranted intrusion into the physician-patient relationship.”

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BACKGROUND

Abortion rights advocates say that the so-called partial-birth abortion procedure comprises as few as .04% of all abortions performed after 24 weeks of gestation, or about 200 a year nationwide. But Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee Inc., says the number may be much higher. The fact is, no one knows.