Aborting the Partial-Birth Ban

The debate, passage, and eventual veto of the partial-birth abortion ban reveals the deep pro-abortion leanings of some Catholic legislators. As California’s Attorney General Dan Lungren explains, the hard-core pro-aborts do not want women to have fewer abortions because it would threaten a key tennet of their philosophy: that unborn children are things, not people.

28 percent of the House members and 20 percent of the senators who voted against the ban identified themselves as Catholic. In the Senate, they are the usual suspects from the old leftist wing of the Democratic Party: Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, Barbara Mikulski, Christopher Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Tom Daschle, Tom Harkin, and Carol Moseley-Braun. Interestingly, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan dodged the issue by not casting a vote. Only two Catholic Democrats voted in favor of the ban: Joseph Biden and John Breaux. In contrast, the nine Senate Catholic Republicans were united in their support of the ban; not one of them voted against it.

In the House, it was a somewhat different story. Almost all Catholic House Republicans, 55 total, voted for the ban. The four who voted against it: Connie Morella, Peter Torkildson, Steven Horn, and Sherwood Boehlert, are, not surprisingly, the most liberal members of their party. Catholic Democrats in the House were more clearly split on the ban (31 for, 36 against), in contrast to the Catholic Democratic Senators.

Worthy of closer study is the story of those Catholic House members who had been identified as pro-abortion by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), but who cast votes in support of the ban: Susan Molinari, Jim Moran, Patrick Kennedy (son of Senator Kennedy), and Matthew Martinez.

The reason for these defections? The abortion procedure itself. Congressman Ron Lewis, an adoptive father and a Baptist minister, stated for Crisis that “the ban sold itself” because it was clear that the procedure was a cruel act of death. He noted that when the ban’s supporters graphically showed what the procedure entailed, they forced the legislators to confront its brutality.

For whatever reason, once the defections had taken place in the House and Senate, who remained to oppose the ban? Lewis had a succinct answer: “the hard core.” Lobbying efforts were fruitless with this group because, he claimed, they were “just unreachable on the issue.” The reason? Their unshakable belief in the right to abort over the right to life.

Role of Cardinals and Laity

During the first phase of House and Senate debate, individual bishops generally maintained a low profile, choosing to work through the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (NCCB) Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities. Helen Alvare, the Secretariat’s director of planning and information, frequently testified on Capitol Hill in support of the ban and provided a wealth of background materials and graphics on the procedure to Hill staffers and members.

Ms. Alvare’s work paid off—in the House, at least. There the voting was 67 percent in favor, 33 percent against. In the Senate, however, the vote was much closer: only 55 percent in favor, 45 percent against, and the 55 percent was far short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

One longtime Catholic political observer thought that, at this point, the pro-life forces believed they had won the fight. After all, the ban had passed the House and Senate, and the NCCB’s January 1996 poll showed that 71 percent of Americans supported the legislation. “Maybe they thought (president) Clinton wouldn’t veto a bill with those high polling numbers,” she said.

But soon after its passage, the president gave strong indications that he would veto the legislation, again demonstrating the emptiness of his “safe, legal, and rare” rhetoric. Now the cardinals began to assert themselves in this second phase of the legislative action. While some of their letters to the president emphasized the brutality of the procedure, others had a decidedly more political tone.

On December 22, for example, Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles stated: “The small group of people advocating your veto of H.R. 1833 is in my opinion a small fringe group who do not represent at all the enormous majority of Americans. I can assure you that this fringe group and their position do not represent the Catholics of the United States, and all of us are extremely concerned that our president would veto a bill with such overwhelming support in the House of Representatives and in the Senate.”

The White House’s gambit was, at first, to portray the legislation as constitutionally infirm due to its lack of a health exception. This lack, the president said, put the legislation at odds with Roe v. Wade, and as Roe is precedential law, the ban would not withstand a constitutional challenge.

Cardinal Law of Boston responded in a very detailed letter on February 22, in which he explicitly refuted the Roe argument and explained why the health exception was a giant loophole. According to the cardinal, Roe did not address the legality of an abortion when the unborn child was in the process of birth. He noted that such abortions were a crime in Texas in 1973 (the time of the Roe decision), and remain a crime today, since the plaintiffs did not challenge the criminality of that type of abortion.

The cardinal also pointed out in his letter that the health exception would make the bill meaningless because the phrase “the health of the mother” (as defined in Doe v. Bolton) had been construed by the Supreme Court to include emotional and social factors. Thus, according to Cardinal Law, the health exception could be successfully cited if the woman was simply unhappy about having a child.

The “Health” Argument

But the president had already delivered the knockout punch. On February 28 he wrote to Senator Orrin Hatch stating that he would veto the legislation. In various press statements, the White House deemphasized the constitutional issue, while pointing out the bill’s purported inadequate protections for the “health” of the mother. This was a calculated move to deflect attention away from the issue of the procedure itself and toward the president’s “concern” for women.

In an interview for Crisis, Dan Lungren, California’s attorney general and the state’s highest ranking elected official both pro-life and Catholic, likened the president’s “health of the mother” issue to “Mediscare”—his code word for the Democrat’s tactic of scaring the elderly over the Congressional Republicans’ plan to overhaul Medicare. The president, according to Lungren, knows how to “hit the emotional hot buttons” and was doing so again to defend his veto of the ban. Lungren believes Clinton’s veto is part of a tactical move to shore up his political base on the left.

This view is shared by veteran political columnists Evans and Novak, who in a recent column stated that “the Clinton White House is careful not to alienate the liberal hard core,” and that Clinton’s veto of the ban “means that he will not risk the disapproval of the feminists under any conditions.”

Once President Clinton drew his line in the sand on February 28, the tone of the bishops’ letters changed dramatically. Gone were their legalistic arguments; in their stead were cries of outrage.

Cardinal Bernadin’s letters to the president of December 21 and April 1 provide an excellent study in contrasts. In December, he informed the president that enactment of the legislation would protect women “from a potentially damaging and dangerous procedure while maintaining the full legal status of second and third trimester abortions” (Emphasis added). His unstated message appeared to be, “Mr. President, you can sign this legislation and still assure your ‘pro-choice’ supporters that they will continue to have access to abortions.”

Fast forward to April, where a now-angry Cardinal Bernadin wrote that he was “profoundly saddened” by the president’s decision, and he found it “incomprehensible” that the president chose to ignore the ban’s wide support with the electorate and on Capitol Hill. Urging the president to leave “the politics of extremism” behind, he also stated flatly that he was not convinced by Clinton’s veto rationale. Further, the cardinal expressed fear that Clinton was sending a “very disturbing message to the people of this nation,” a message that “persons of good will must give serious consideration as they cast their ballots in November.”

In another April first letter, Cardinal Hickey issued “one last urgent appeal” to the president to sign H.R. 1833 into law. Like his colleague in Chicago, the cardinal’s frustration can be clearly seen in his words, as he called the president’s possible veto during the Easter and Passover seasons “a true slap in the face to all those who believe in the sanctity of life.” He then proceeded implicitly to chide the president for paying more heed to “the strongly entrenched and well-financed campaign of Planned Parenthood than the will of the clear majority of Americans.”

Cardinal Mahony’s Palm Sunday (March 31) letter to Clinton is also noteworthy. In it, he wrote that he could not envision “any step more repugnant than to have our president veto such essential legislation and do it during Holy Week or Easter Week.”

Lungren’s Forecast

But what is the next step for this legislation? While some activists may hunger for a veto-override fight, Lungren believes that such a fight would exact a heavy political cost, especially if the override effort failed. He noted that sixty-seven votes are needed for a Senate override and that it would be hard to get the needed thirteen senators to switch their vote on this high-visibility issue. A seasoned politician, Lungren spoke from experience when he said the main difficulty was that legislators hate to admit that they had voted wrongly, and for the override to succeed, thirteen senators would have to take that tough step.

And if the override vote should fail, Lungren predicts the media would portray the ban issue as a “two-time loser”—once at the president’s desk, the other on the Senate floor. He expected the media’s portrayal of the ban as a losing issue would ensure that it would be dead for at least a year politically. Lungren believed a better strategy would be to hold off an override vote and introduce the issue again next year with a new House and Senate, and possibly a new president. In the event Clinton is reelected, Lungren thought next year’s goal should be a veto-proof two-thirds majority support for the ban in the Senate.

After looking at the partial-birth abortion ban’s legislative story, what lessons can pro-life Catholics and activists learn for the next round?

Lungren recommends that people would do well to put the abortion issue, including partial-birth abortions, in a larger pro-family context. In the two decades since Roe v. Wade, Americans, according to Lungren, have adopted a “reflexive response to abortion.” By putting the abortion question in a family values context, he believed Americans could be persuaded to “take a second look.” As the chief enforcer of California’s laws, he drew a direct link between kids killing kids and mothers killing their unborn children—in both cases the root cause is a belief that other people’s lives have no value. This lack of respect for life, Lungren stated, has caused “a crisis in values in America.”

Like former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, Lungren thinks that America needs to lessen its social acceptance of abortion; he believes this change in American culture is already taking place, as abortion rates are dropping.

As to future pro-life legislative battles and the role of the Catholic bishops in those battles, Lungren stated that while the bishops act in “an area of prudential judgment” to inform the laity on pro-life issues, their ability to influence political outcomes is limited. It is up to the laity to act for the family in the political arena.

A Wake-Up Call

Clinton’s February 28 veto announcement was “a wake- up call” to all Catholics concerned with pro-life, pro-family issues. How deep Clinton’s roots go with the feminist camp were evidenced by his disregard of the polls on the issue.

In the end, this story tells us that the radical feminist pro- abortion movement remains a powerful force in Washington. It is so powerful that many nominally Catholic legislators, as well as the first president to graduate from a Catholic university, are willing to ignore both the ethical aspects of partial-birth abortions and the moral guidance of the American Catholic hierarchy. All of this they have done despite overwhelming polling data and electoral support to ban the procedure.

The good news is that when pro-life people of different beliefs work together, they too can be a powerful force. Representative Lewis, an evangelical, was pleased to see Catholic and evangelical congressional members working together on the issue. With God’s help, a healthy dose of political realism, and the courage to “ask the tough questions,” pro-life, pro-family activists are in a good position to make further inroads against the culture of death.

Author

  • Joanne Sadler

    At the time this article was published, Joanne Sadler wrote on political issues.

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