There was a bizarre moment last week in the otherwise grim
debate over "partial birth abortion." The Senate had just voted to
ban the procedure but had fallen three votes shy of the number
needed to override a promised veto from President Clinton.
At a news conference, Sen. Trent Lott, the Republican leader, was
asked if he would schedule the override vote close to next year's
midterm elections.
"This is not a political issue," the majority leader asserted, using
a line frequently trotted out on Capitol Hill but rarely so
inappropriately.
Until a couple of years ago, no one had ever heard of "partial birth
abortion." The term befuddled even doctors who knew the
procedure -- in which the fetus is partially born before having
its brains vacuumed out and its skull collapsed -- as intact
dilation and extraction. But then, abortion opponents came up
with the name to incite a new legislative battle after losing for
two decades in the courts.
It is precisely because "partial birth" has always been more of a
political strategy than a real issue that it has been successful.
Even the people supporting the ban on the procedure admit that
a ban would not necessarily eliminate a single abortion. (Doctors
would still be free to use other methods.)
Nonetheless, the matter has upended the political landscape.
It has forced virtually all the players in the debate into corners
they would rather not be defending.
Abortion opponents, who argue that this one procedure is so grisly
it must be banned, seem to be implying that other methods of
abortion are somehow acceptable.
Abortion-rights advocates find themselves defending something
that really is grisly, which makes them seem like extremists and
has cost them enormous political capital.
And abortion-rights lawmakers are casting anti-abortion votes --
votes that may make them vulnerable every time an abortion vote
comes up.
The American Medical Association, on the eve of the vote last
week, endorsed the ban -- an endorsement that raised questions
about what the organization might have got in return for violating
one of its fundamental precepts -- never to support Congress'
attempt to dictate medical practice.
Even President Clinton was pushed into an uncomfortable
position. He was determined to stand tall against a ban that he
had vetoed once. But to show that he wasn't intransigent on the
issue, he supported a proposal by Sen. Tom Daschle, the
Democratic leader, that would have banned all abortions of fetuses
that could live outside the womb -- a bill that carried far broader
restrictions on abortion than the bill he plans to re-veto.
The politics have become so convoluted that they seemed to have
tied Daschle up in knots. He switched his vote from last year and
voted for the ban, taking the same position as that held by the
Catholic Church. Then he rose on the Senate floor to denounce the
church for "harsh rhetoric and vitriolic characterizations usually
more identified with the radical right than with thoughtful religious
leadership." Even as he voted for the ban, he declared it
unconstitutional.
With that, Daschle vexed many of his long-time abortion-rights
allies and made new conservative friends who perceived his
proposal as a great offer that their anti-abortion allies should
have jumped at.
And here the politics really got screwy.
Those anti-abortion allies rejected the Daschle proposal because
it was not pure enough. While the ban on "partial birth,"
sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., allowed an exception
only to save the life of the woman, Daschle's ban on all abortions
of viable fetuses allowed exceptions both for the life of the woman
AND to protect her from "grievous" physical harm. Abortion
opponents said the health exception was a loophole and said the
ban would be impossible to prosecute.
And as proof that Daschle's proposal was a paltry concession,
abortion opponents pointed to the apparent acquiescence of
abortion-rights advocates.
In fact, though, those abortion-rights advocates were silent in
part because they had already damaged their credibility.
David Garrow, the author of "Liberty and Sexuality," a book about
the abortion -rights movement, said the abortion-rights advocates
did not dare criticize Daschle, "because to criticize Daschle is to
criticize Clinton, who has endorsed the Daschle bill, and they need
Clinton to veto Santorum."
Garrow added: "The only thing saving the pro-choice groups from a
major defeat, and preventing the defection of a pro-choice
President, is the absolutism of the right-to-lifers who won't take
the Daschle bill. It's really comic."
Rarely has so much energy been expended by so many people
over something that, in practical terms, would have so little effect.
But abortion opponents believe that every minute has been worth
it. They have demonstrated that they can stage a winning
campaign. And for now, they have the upper hand. But where
they are going is not entirely clear.
Ralph Reed, who is leaving his job as executive director of the
Christian Coalition in September to become a political consultant,
said the purpose of the ban was not to reduce abortions but to
create a climate where "abortion on demand" would lose legitimacy.
"It's too early to know what strategy will follow this vote," he said.
"You put a lot of darts up on the board and see which one lands
near a bull's eye."
The bull's eye is coming up with something that captures the
public imagination as powerfully as "partial birth" did. In April
1996, the Gallup Organization found that 57 percent of Americans
opposed the procedure; by July, after just three months of abortion opponents making it an issue in Congress, 71 percent opposed it, a significant leap. In
the last several months, a dozen states have banned the procedure and several more are on the verge of doing so.
Not only did abortion opponents portray "partial birth" as a
particularly gruesome procedure, they changed the public focus
from the woman to the baby. "The whole ground has shifted," said
Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, which lobbied for the ban. "We're not on the theoretical question of choice, which always strikes a
responsive chord with the libertarian impulses of the American
people but more on what the choice is."
Still, no one can tell how far abortion opponents can travel down
that path. Bauer is feeling so buoyed by their success that he is
aiming high: "When this is over, I want to move on to an up-or-
down vote on second- and third-trimester abortions," he said.
The question is whether the public's revulsion toward a particular procedure translates into a larger desire to restrict abortion even more broadly. Cheryl Arnedt, a polling analyst with CBS News, said opinion on abortion has been remarkably consistent over the years, with the public wanting to keep it legal but with reasonable restrictions.
But abortion opponents are making inroads, she said, because the
public is deeply ambivalent about it, and each single restriction
sounds reasonable.
"The public doesn't want to make it illegal," Ms. Arnedt said. "But
that's different from wanting women to have a choice."
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company