U.S. House Gives Final Approval to Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, But Some Democratic Senators Delay Final Senate Vote

WASHINGTON (Oct. 4, 2003) - - Only a single legislative step - - a final vote in the U.S. Senate - - remains before Congress sends the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (S. 3) to President Bush for his signature.

The bill represents the first direct national restriction on any method of abortion since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in 1973.

The House of Representatives gave final approval to the bill on October 2 by an overwhelming vote of 281-142.

"It has been almost a decade since the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortion escaped the shadowy corners of abortion clinics and was disclosed to the public," said Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Oh.), the prime sponsor of the bill in the House. With the House's final approval, "we move one step closer to finally banning this horrific procedure," he noted.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tx.) proclaimed the vote as "a victory for humanity" and a "pivot" in the long battle to protect the unborn. Rep. James Oberstar (D-Mn.) said House passage was "a landmark day for those who, for more than 30 years, have worked to reduce the number of abortions performed in America."

Approval by the Senate is also assured. Based on past Senate roll calls on the measure and its antecedents, 64 or 65 of the 100 U.S. senators are likely to vote to send the bill to President Bush.

Nevertheless, some Democratic senators who oppose the bill, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), prevented the vote from occurring before the Senate began a 10-day recess on October 3. This means that the necessary Senate vote cannot occur earlier than mid-October.

"President Clinton and a minority of senators, mostly Democrats, have blocked enactment of the partial-birth abortion ban for eight years, and now a group made up entirely of Democratic senators is obstructing the bill for additional weeks," commented NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, who worked with federal lawmakers to originate the legislation in 1995.

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was originally introduced in 1995 by Congressman Charles Canady (R-Fl.), who retired from Congress in 2000.

Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is the lead sponsor of the legislation in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tn.), a strong supporter of the ban, expressed regret that Democratic senators did not allow the Senate to give final approval to the bill on October 2, immediately after the House acted.

"As soon as we get back, we will be scheduling it for consideration," Frist said on October 3, as the Senate began its recess. "It is imperative that the Senate consider this measure in short order so the President can sign this legislation into law."

President Bush urged Congress to pass the ban in his January 28 State of the Union speech. On June 4, he said, "I urge Congress to quickly resolve any differences and send me the final bill as soon as possible so that I can sign it into law."

On October 2, as the House completed action on the bill, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters, "The House right now is voting on the conference committee report on the legislation that would ban the brutal practice of partial-birth abortion. This will be an important step toward building a culture of life in America. And we look forward to the House passage and urge the Senate to move quickly on this important piece of legislation as well."

On the 281-142 October 2 House roll call, the ban was supported by 218 Republicans and 63 Democrats. It was opposed by four Republicans, 137 Democrats, and one independent.

A January Gallup poll found that 70 percent of the public favors the ban.

(The October 2 House roll call will be published in the November issue of NRL News. The roll calls by which the Senate and House gave preliminary approval to the bill were published in NRL News earlier this year. All of these roll calls, including the Oct. 2 House vote, are posted in the congressional scorecards found at the Legislative Action Center on the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org.)

Legal Challenge Expected

The bill legally defines a partial-birth abortion as any abortion in which the baby is delivered either "past the navel . . . outside the body of the mother," or "in the case of head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother," before being killed.

The method is usually used in the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy, and usually on healthy mothers of healthy unborn babies. It is sometimes used somewhat earlier, but never during the first three months. It is also sometimes used in the seventh month and later.

The bill would allow the method only if it was ever necessary to save a mother's life.

Pro-abortion groups have vowed to challenge the ban in federal courts as soon as it is signed into law. Reportedly these will include challenges by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the National Abortion Federation, and by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of Nebraska abortionist LeRoy Carhart.

In the case of Stenberg v. Carhart in 2000, by a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortions, holding that under Roe v. Wade an abortionist must be permitted to use the method when he sees fit.

Johnson noted that NRLC has never predicted whether or not the Supreme Court will uphold the federal ban.

"In Stenberg v. Carhart in 2000, five Supreme Court justices struck down Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortion, holding that Roe v. Wade guarantees an abortionist's right to perform a partial-birth abortion whenever he chooses," Johnson noted. "But that was a 5-to-4 decision, and we hope that by the time this federal ban reaches the Supreme Court, there will be at least a one vote shift away from the extreme position taken by the five justices in 2000 - - either by a justice seeing this bill in a different light, or by a change in personnel."

In the meantime, "This bill puts a spotlight on the brutal violence that premature infants suffer every day because of Roe v. Wade, as interpreted by five justices on the U.S. Supreme Court," Johnson said.

Congressional opponents of the bill said that it failed to show proper deference to past rulings of the Supreme Court.

The bill is "nothing but a veiled attempt to undermine the Supreme Court's landmark ruling," complained House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

Another leading congressional opponent of the ban, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), said, "This bill reads as if the authors carefully studied the Supreme Court decisions, then went out of their way to thumb their noses at 30 years of constitutional law."

Kate Michelman, president of NARAL, said, "This overly broad bill will strike at the very heart of Roe, and creates a legal pathway to the overturn of Roe ultimately, so we have to challenge it."

Conference Committee

Both houses approved the legislation earlier this year by about two-to-one margins. The only substantive difference between the House and Senate versions was the Harkin Amendment, an amendment expressing support for Roe v. Wade that was narrowly adopted in the Senate.

In order to get rid of the Harkin Amendment, sponsors of the bill decided to send it to a House-Senate conference committee. Opponents were able to delay that step for some weeks, but on September 17 the Senate voted to go to conference. The conference met on September 30.

Because Republicans hold majority control of both the House and Senate, Republican supporters of the bill outnumbered Democratic opponents 3-to-2 among the conferees from both the House and the Senate, and the conference was chaired by the chairmen of the Judiciary committees, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wi.), both strong supporters of the bill.

On party-line votes, the committee deleted the Harkin Amendment, and also rejected a series of other gutting amendments offered by Sen. Boxer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca.), and Rep. Nadler.

"Health" Claims Debated

During the October 2 House debate, opponents insisted that the partial-birth abortion method is sometimes necessary to protect women's "health."

In reply, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Sensenbrenner said that the bill includes "extensive congressional findings, based upon medical evidence received in a series of legislative hearings, that . . . partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary to preserve a woman's health, poses serious risks to women's health, and in fact is below the requisite standard of medical care."

Some opponents of the ban also resurrected long-discredited claims that the method is used mostly or only in cases of babies who cannot survive after birth because of profound disorders.

"These are not children who are going to be born and run around the room," said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY).

In response, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, noted that even the head of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers had admitted that such claims were untrue. "Most of those who are killed with partial-birth abortion methods are perfectly healthy, perfectly normal - - and those kids, like their disabled brothers and sisters, should not be executed in this terrible way or in any other way," Smith said.

Resources on Partial-Birth Abortion

The NRLC website contains the most extensive archive of documentation on partial-birth abortion available anywhere on the Internet, including documentation on all disputed issues surrounding partial-birth abortion, White House statements on the issue, groundbreaking reports by investigative journalists for major newspapers and periodicals, and expert-certified color illustrations of the method, all at http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html.

The color illustrations of the partial-birth abortion method that were displayed on the Senate and House floors during the debates this year, along with documentation of their accuracy by eminent medical authorities, are here: http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA_Images/PBA_Images_Heathers_Place.htm.

Medical drawings of a "dilation and evacuation" (D&E) abortion, a different method not covered by the bill, appear here: http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/DEabortiongraphic.html.

A basic resource, "Key Facts on Partial-Birth Abortion," is posted here: http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/keyfactsPBA.html

The NRLC archive also contains NRLC's in-depth testimony presented to Congress, with citations to primary sources: http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/test.html.