Bread & circuses - Pres Clinton's support of abortion

National Review, May 6, 1996 by Kate O'Beirne

AFTER a recent CNN Crossfire debate between the Feminist Majority's Eleanor Smeal and me, a conservative activist called to say that for the first time in a year he felt his team was playing offense. A visibly uncomfortable Mrs. Smeal had been forced to attempt to justify partial-birth abortions. She was trapped in the spotlight, alone in the crossfire.

But she and her feminist allies insisted that President Clinton join her there. And despite strong bipartisan opposition to this gruesome procedure, they succeeded. Mr. Clinton vetoed legislation that would have banned such abortions. Not for the first time, feminist demands have made a weak man tremble.

Some abortion-rights supporters cautioned the White House that "every time that picture [of the procedure] is shown you lose" and advised Mr. Clinton to compromise on the ban. But they were told that in an election year he couldn't risk alienating the feminist grassroots by permitting any abortion procedure to be outlawed. The White House nervously hoped that the personal testimonies of women who had undergone late-term abortions would trump medical diagrams and facts.

But the legislation Mr. Clinton vetoed enjoys the support of over 70 per cent of the public. Even among those who describe themselves as pro-choice, there is a two-thirds majority in favor of prohibition. Opposition to partial-birth abortions is therefore clearly the common ground that observers of the abortion battle have long urged both sides to find. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and 71 other House Democrats voted for the legislation. Gephardt's press secretary explains that her boss typically votes pro-choice, "but the sentiment in his district was overwhelmingly against this particular procedure."

That leaves extremists like Bill Clinton -- and Dr. Martin Haskell, who claims credit for perfecting the partial-birth-abortion technique. The technique first came to light in 1989 in the Dayton Daily News. A college student who had witnessed Dr. Haskell perform abortions notified police that a child had been killed in the process of being delivered. Dr. Haskell assured the police that no crime had been committed because the infant's head was still inside the mother when it was killed.

A 1993 American Medical News interview asked why, if the rest of the baby could be delivered without risk to the mother, the baby's head couldn't. Dr. Haskell replied: "The point here is you're attempting to do an abortion . . . not to see how do I manipulate the situation so that I get a live birth instead." Macabre facts like these proved a public-relations disaster for Haskell's defenders during debate on the ban. So they abandoned candor and asserted that the anesthesia given the mother kills the baby before the abortion. Alarmed that this nonsense might deter pregnant women from undergoing any operation that required anesthesia, the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists testified that even when general anesthesia is administered to the mother only a portion of it reaches the baby; the local anesthesia used in this procedure doesn't reach the baby at all.

Ban opponents also argued that Congress should not intervene in doctors' clinical decisions. Yet the American Medical Association's Legislative Council unanimously recommended that the ban be endorsed, one council member explaining that this procedure is "basically repulsive" and "not a recognized medical technique."

The legislation compromised to the extent of allowing partial-birth abortions if necessary to save the life of the mother. That did not satisfy opponents such as NARAL. Mr. Clinton insisted that these opponents be accommodated by an amendment permitting such abortions if necessary to preserve the health of the mother. But as Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, points out, owing to the Court's decision in Doe v. Bolton, the term "health" is "a universal legal solvent, which dissolves any limitation on abortion."

Despite the feminists' disinformation campaign, the partial-birth-abortion debate may have turned the tide on the abortion issue. Michael Schwartz, executive director of the House Pro-Family Caucus, says: "This legislation focused public attention on the reality of abortion, and defenders of this gruesome procedure are quite properly feeling ashamed of themselves." The tide has left a big abortion problem on Democratic shores.

THE veto has split senior congressional Democrats from their abortion-rights allies. It has proved too much for the rank and file, too. Jose Kennard, a Texas Democratic Executive Committee member, has resigned, stating that he felt betrayed -- "Unlike the debate over abortion that has been going on for decades, this procedure is clearly the taking of a human life." Many Hispanic Democrats are pro-life and will share Kennard's anger with Clinton's extremism.

The anguish of Kennard and others like him should give rise to a Democrats for Life group that would recognize that a pro-choice party can still protect the life of a child seconds from birth. The media would drop its obsession with GOP abortion squabbles if five thousand such Democrats rallied outside their party's convention in Chicago. All eight Catholic cardinals label the President's action as "beyond comprehension" and pledged to do everything in their power to see that the "shameful" veto is overridden.