c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-President Clinton’s veto Wednesday (April 10) of a proposed ban on a controversial late-term abortion procedure has highlighted an emotional moral battle that may have profound implications for the 1996 presidential race.

Condemned harshly by groups ranging from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to the Christian Coalition and praised by religious and secular groups that favor abortion rights, Clinton vetoed legislation that would have made it a crime for doctors to perform a third-trimester procedure known as”intact dilation and evacuation”-what foes called”partial-birth abortion.” If it had not been vetoed, the legislation would have been the first congressional ban of an abortion procedure since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld women’s right to abortion in the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.

Opponents of abortion rights said the procedure is tantamount to murdering a fully formed human. Clinton argued that while he, too, abhors late-term abortions, the procedure is necessary in a small number of cases to protect the life or health of a mother suffering the effects of a dangerously difficult pregnancy.

Immediately after vetoing the measure Wednesday evening, the president put a personal face on the debate by introducing several women who had undergone the procedure after learning of dire health problems with their fetuses.”This terrible problem affects a few hundred Americans every year who desperately want their children, are trying to build families, and are trying to strengthen their families,”Clinton said.”And they should not become pawns in a larger debate, even though it is a serious and legitimate debate of profound significance.” Clinton said he vetoed the ban because its supporters did not include an exception for the”serious, adverse health consequences to the mother.”The proposed measure would have allowed the procedure if the mother’s life were in danger, but did not make a broader exception to cover cases where the woman’s health-but not life-was in jeopardy.

The procedure involves partially extracting a fetus, feet first, and then collapsing the skull in the birth canal by suctioning out the brain.

Spokespersons on either side of the debate variously described Clinton as an extremist and a protector of sound public policy.”Even though it (the veto) was promised … we are shocked that he could put himself on the side of what is virtually infanticide,”said Helen Alvare, planning and information director of the pro-life office of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.”I think it means pro-lifers have gained the moral high ground in an even stronger way. They have shown that the other side is more extreme than their ordinary rhetoric would reveal. It will be a black mark on the pro-abortion group and the pro-abortion president that will last a long time.” But Ann Thompson Cook, executive director of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a group representing 38 Christian and Jewish religious organizations, said those who supported the ban are exercising only”partial compassion.””They’re not compassionate toward the women who do what can only be called soul-searching at this moment, and it’s not compassionate toward the fetus that is in severe circumstances,”she said.

Cook said giving the government an opportunity to”second-guess”the decisions of women, their families and physicians is inappropriate.”It can only impose somebody else’s religion for the government to say one thing is right and wrong in all situations,”she said.

Ban supporters, including Sen. Majority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas, the expected Republican nominee for president, intend to make Clinton’s action a key issue in the 1996 election campaign. Dole said Clinton has”embraced the extreme position of those who support abortion at any time, at any place and for any reason.””It will be very hard, if not impossible, for Bill Clinton to look Roman Catholic and evangelical voters in the eye and ask for their support in November,”declared Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition executive director.”By allowing that procedure to continue unchecked, President Clinton has disappointed and deeply offended one of the largest voting blocks in the electorate. Bill Clinton has done more today than jeopardize the lives of unborn children, he has jeopardized his own chances of re-election.” Gloria Feldt, president-elect of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said she, too, expects that voters will be reminded of the veto closer to Election Day.”I’m sure that anti-choice groups will try to make it an issue,”she said.”This is not an issue for Congress. This is an issue for doctors and for their patients.” John C. Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio, said the debate over the procedure will likely help Republicans and hurt Democrats as they attempt to attract swing voters.”The Catholic swing vote among those people who might be influenced by this type of issue may amount to 5 percent,”said Green.”In a real close election, you can see how that could make a difference one way or another.” Beyond the political rhetoric are the sheer emotions that are evoked by descriptions of the medical procedure and the conditions of the fetuses that prompt its consideration.

The women who met with Clinton shortly after his veto described the torment of the doctor’s-office visits when they learned that the child they looked forward to bearing was no longer a healthy fetus.

Claudia Ades of Los Angeles, Calif., said she and her husband implored physicians to help them.”We begged for a cardiologist or a neurosurgeon or someone that could fix my baby’s brain or the hole in his heart,”said Ades, who is Jewish.”I say this for the people that say that we don’t care and for the people who say we don’t want our children, and for the people that say we have no spirit or no soul or no religion.” Ban supporters, describing the procedure in explicit detail, say they can’t see how it can improve the mother’s health.”Once a woman has vaginally delivered a child four-fifths of the way, to say that it is medically necessary rather than to just deliver it another couple of inches … defies common sense,”Alvare said.

Clinton explained in a letter Wednesday to Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago why he had used his veto pen. Bernardin was among those who supported the ban.”These are painful and sobering issues,”the president wrote.”I understand your desire to eliminate the use of a procedure you see as inhumane. But to eliminate it without taking into consideration the rare and tragic circumstances in which its use may be necessary would be, in my judgment, even more inhumane.”

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