THE REAL PARTIAL-BIRTH WAR

By SALLY B. DONNELLY/LITTLE ROCK

For most political activists, maneuvering a bill through the twists and turns of Congress is the ultimate act. But for antiabortion activists, last week's overwhelming vote in the House to ban partial-birth abortions was merely a sideshow. They knew President Clinton would veto the bill--and on Friday he did, effectively putting off any more debate until next session. More important, they knew there is another battlefield--statehouses across the country--where, time after time, they are winning the fight.

This year alone, 15 states have outlawed a rarely used procedure known politically as partial-birth abortion and described medically as "intact dilation and extraction." To pro-choice groups, the new laws in states from Rhode Island to Montana represent an alarming challenge to the fundamental principles set down by the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. "The antiabortion movement has in one sense already won," says Janet Benshoof, president of the Center for Reproductive Law & Policy, which is challenging nine of the new laws in court.

At the center of the debate is a medical procedure in which a doctor partly delivers a late-term fetus and then uses a suction device to extract brain tissue before removing the rest of the body. Advocates on either side dispute why these abortions are performed and how many are done each year. Even doctors cannot agree: the American Medical Association supports a ban, while the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes it.

Many of the new state laws ignore medical definitions and rely instead on the emotionally charged phrase partial birth. In Arkansas, one of the states where new laws are being contested in court, Little Rock lawyer and state legislator Lisa Ferrell said last week that she knew the law contained no actual medical definition of partial birth but she voted for the measure because the procedure is "horrifying." The Arkansas ban, like the one passed by Congress, does not take into account the health of the pregnant woman or make a distinction between a viable fetus and a nonviable one--two issues enshrined by the Supreme Court.

The stage for the statehouse triumphs was set in 1996, when organizations like the conservative National Right to Life Committee realized that no partial-birth bill was likely to get through Congress that year. The group set about drafting model bills for the states and providing information to affiliates nationwide. At the grass-roots level, activists organized prayer vigils and phone banks to persuade state legislators. The strategy has worked. Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the NRLC, believes the push has changed the nature of the abortion debate. "The question is now determining what are the parameters of Roe."

Judges in eight states have temporarily suspended enforcement of the legislation, and in Michigan the state law has been declared unconstitutional. Both sides expect the issue to reach the Supreme Court, but in the meantime there is no respite in the trenches. Other court decisions may be made where judgments are pending. And legislators in several states are preparing reworded bills, designed to get around judicial rulings, for next session.

--By Sally B. Donnelly/Little Rock