National Right
to
Life
-- White House statement in support of Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (July 23, 2002)
-- How U.S. House members voted on unsuccessful attempt to amend the ban to allow partial-birth abortions before "viability," and after "viability" for any "health" reason
-- U.S. House Will Pass Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act Wednesday;
Will Senate Leadership Block Bill Despite Majority Support?
-- Key Facts on Partial-Birth Abortion
-- NRLC’s congressional testimony of March 11, 1997
Partial-Birth Abortion Page
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U.S. House Again Passes Ban on
Partial-Birth Abortion, 274-151; With
No Veto Backstop, Will the Senate Democratic Leader Kill the Ban?
WASHINGTON (July 24, 2002) -- The U.S. House of Representatives today
approved the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act by a lopsided, bipartisan
vote of 274-151.
Congress has approved national bans on partial-birth abortion twice before, but they were vetoed by President Clinton in 1996 and 1997. On each occasion, the House voted to override the vetoes, but supporters fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate.
The Senate last considered the bill in 1999, when 63 senators voted to pass it (including 14 Democrats), with an additional two supporters absent. Yet the bill is in peril in the Senate, because Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) is closely allied with the pro-abortion lobby, which vehemently opposes the bill. Daschle could employ the procedural powers of the majority leader to prevent an up-and-down vote on the House-passed bill.
“If there was a clean up-and-down vote on the bill passed by the House, the Senate would approve it,” said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. “If the ban on partial-birth abortion does not reach President Bush for his signature, the blame will rest squarely on the Senate Democratic leadership.”
Most partial-birth abortions are performed in the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy. There is abundant medical evidence that the baby at this stage is extremely sensitive to pain. Indeed, at this stage, an infant who delivers spontaneously is usually born alive.
When legislation dealing with partial-birth abortion was first introduced in Congress in 1995, major pro-abortion groups insisted that the method was used only a few hundred times a year, and only in cases involving acute medical crises -- claims repeated by some lawmakers today. But such claims were entirely discredited by early 1997, when the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers admitted that the procedure is performed thousands of times annually, mostly on healthy babies of healthy mothers. (See clippings at www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html.)
Many lawmakers who oppose the bill say they instead
favor a bill to ban “late-term” abortions with a “health” exception. The
leading House advocate of this counter-proposal, Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-Md.),
has candidly admitted that this so-called “ban” actually would allow
third-trimester abortions even for “mental health.” (See
www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/Phony%20ban%20on%20late‑term.pdf.)
In the Senate, a similar phony ban has been promoted by Senator Dick Durbin
(D-Il.) and others.
Further documentation on partial-birth abortion is posted at
www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html. See especially “Key
Facts on Partial-Birth Abortion”, and NRLC’s congressional testimony of
March 11, 1997 (www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/test.html).