New Limits on Abortion

Congress finds a compromise, and the right-to-lifers come out ahead

Five years ago, the right-to-life movement was reeling from the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions in the first six months of pregnancy. But the antiabortionists have made a spectacular recovery. Last week they demonstrated their political muscle by winning--or at least partly winning --an important battle when the House and Senate voted restrictions on Government-paid abortions. If the new measure had been in effect in 1976, it would have ruled out two-thirds of the 260,000 abortions that were financed by the federal-state Medicaid program--or about a quarter of all abortions in the U.S.

Buoyed by last week's victory, the right-to-lifers immediately began planning their congressional strategy for next year. They will press for a ban on all Medicaid abortions, without exception, and ask that these procedures be outlawed at military hospitals. They will also lobby against including abortions in any national health insurance program that Congress may consider in the future.

Vowed the antiabortionists' chief advocate in the House, Illinois Republican Henry Hyde, a father of one daughter and three sons: "This issue is not going to go a way."

The moral dilemma of abortion divides the American people, just as their elected representatives are divided (the vote in the House last week was 181 to 167). According to a TIME Yankelovich poll, 64% of the public believe that a woman should be free to have an abortion if she wants one. But 58% agree with Jimmy Carter ("Life is unfair") that public funds should not be used for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or where a woman's life is in danger.

Congress avoided this thicket until June 1976, when the House overwhelmingly supported Hyde's proposal to ban federal funds for Medicaid abortions. Caught by surprise, Senate liberals adopted a strategy that backfired: they went along with Hyde's bill, assuming that the Supreme Court would find it unconstitutional. But the court last June upheld state laws banning Medicaid abortions, despite an impassioned plea from Harry Blackmun, author of the 1973 abortion decision, that the latest ruling was "almost reminiscent of 'Let them eat cake.' " His point: the court in effect was making medically safe abortions legally available only to women who can pay for them.

Because Hyde's measure was an amendment to a one-year appropriations bill, it expired on Oct. 1. When the House passed Hyde's ban again--as an amendment to the 1978 budgets for the departments of Labor and Health, Education and Welfare--Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke rallied the Senate in opposition. Said he: "This is a question of whether poor women should be denied their rights." To which Hyde replied: "It is the unborn children of the middle class and the rich who are discriminated against by this legislation because we have no way to limit their abortions."

In the House-Senate conference committee that hunted for a compromise, efforts to soften the ban were fought vigorously by Chairman Daniel Flood, a Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman. At one point, Democratic Representative David Obey of Wisconsin begged the all-male committee to permit abortions for girls under 16. No, said the majority. What about 15? No again--not even girls under 13. Sputtered New Jersey Republican Representative Millicent Fen wick, a strong advocate of federal funds for abortions for the poor: "I sat there furious, looking at those men--some of them laughing--and I could have kicked them. I try to believe that they did it in ignorance. They haven't sat down and listened to the people who are most affected."

The deadlock continued for five months, with the Senate voting twice against the Hyde prohibition. The House in turn rejected four compromises offered by the Senate. On the sidelines sat Congress's Democratic leaders, who avoided taking a stand lest they antagonize liberals in their own party or clamorous antiabortionists at home.

Last week House Republican Whip Robert Michel came up with a successful compromise. It will prohibit Medicaid abortions, except for cases that meet one of these conditions:

· The life of the woman is in danger if the fetus is carried to term.

· Two doctors determine that she risks "severe and long-lasting physical health damage" from the pregnancy.

· The pregnancy results from rape or incest that was "promptly reported" to a law-enforcement or public health agency.

The battle over abortion will now shift to the state level. More than 30 states have stopped paying for abortions with their own funds. (The average cost ranges from $160 in a clinic to $460 in a hospital.) But those that still pay include such populous states as California, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Michigan,* which will become prime targets for the right-to-lifers.

There will also be stepped-up attacks on the Planned Parenthood organization, which once offered only birth-control programs but lately has channeled more and more of its efforts--and about 14% of its $76.7 million-a-year budget--into abortion services. Many right-to-lifers oppose abortion not only on religious and philosophical grounds but also out of fear that it will contribute to the breakdown of the American family and further erode moral standards. They are particularly upset by Planned Parenthood's willingness to provide birth-control and abortion counseling--and even abortions at 23 clinics across the country--to teen-age girls without telling their parents. The right-to-lifers have set up picket lines at Planned Parenthood abortion clinics in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and St. Paul. The Cincinnati and St. Paul clinics have also been set afire, apparently by anti-abortion extremists.

Clearly, the people who believe that abortion is every woman's right are in retreat. Though she speaks bravely of a political counterattack, Sarah Jane Stewart, field director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, says of last week's Congressional action: "We lost, no matter how you look at it. Congress has been intimidated by the emotional, physical presence of the right-to-lifers." Adds Robert Webber, western regional director of Planned Parenthood: "The right-to-lifers are single-issue individuals. They don't care how a politician stands on human rights or aid to education. They vote on what he or she says about abortion." One certain result: abortion will be a Main Street issue during next year's congressional campaigns.

* The others that pay are: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

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