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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (372)	11/12/2002 6:36:11 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

You gotta quit reading that stuff. It will give you nightmares. Lott's Promise to Bring Up Abortion Worries Bush Aides By Dana Milbank Tuesday, November 12, 2002; Page A23 "I will call it up, we will pass it, and the president will sign it. I'm making that commitment -- you can write it down." -- Once and future Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Nov. 6. Days after winning unchallenged control of the government, the Bush White House and the incoming Republican congressional leadership have scaled back their ambitious tax cut proposals and dampened expectations for an overhaul of Social Security. So what was Trent Lott vowing in Churchillian tones? Homeland security legislation? An economic stimulus package? Well, Lott wants those, too, but his vow was to pass a ban on what opponents of the procedure call "partial-birth" abortions. In an interview with American Family Radio the morning after the GOP midterm election triumph, Lott told the Christian radio network: "We will move the partial-birth abortion bill through. The House did it this year. Once again, Tom Daschle would not call it up. I will." Such public pronouncements on the Hill worry Bush aides. It's not because the president objects to the policy – he had said he would sign a ban on the controversial procedure – but because he does not wish to be seen as a captive of his party's ideologues, as President Bill Clinton did when he moved quickly on gay rights in the military. "I don't take cues from anybody," Bush said at last week's news conference. On Thursday, the White House held a conference call with social conservatives and pleaded with them to be patient. "They're saying the president's priorities are already known, but let's be prudent and not just aggravate the Democrats by putting it in their face," said Deal Hudson, the editor of Crisis Magazine and an ally of the White House. "It may not be the first thing that this administration pushes because it's not this administration's style to get the controversial thing out there at the beginning." It's not clear, however, how much leeway conservatives will give Bush. "This Republican Congress was elected because of the pro-life vote, and they need to heed that vote," said Ken Connor, head of the Family Research Council. "We know the abortion issue was the number two issue that prompted voter turnout in Minnesota, the number three issue in Missouri, and we know 76 percent of self-identified religious conservatives in Georgia voted for Saxby Chambliss. In no small part, the favorable outcome of this election for Republicans is a consequence of motivated pro-life voters who turned out to the polls." The upshot: Religious conservatives will pressure the Republican House and Senate to pass antiabortion measures previously passed by the House but buried by the Democratic Senate. After the ban on the "partial-birth" procedure -- passed by the House in July -- the next priority is a ban on human and embryonic cloning -- which the House passed last year. Next on the list of House-passed measures come the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (giving legal status to a fetus hurt or killed during the commission of a federal crime), the Child Custody Protection Act (making it a crime to take a minor for an out-of-state abortion in violation of a state's parental notification laws), and the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (forbidding state and local government actions against hospitals or health-care workers who refuse to participate in abortions). Connor predicted Senate passage of all five and vowed that "you can count on fact that we will be pressing the Congress to act with dispatch." Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said he expects the Senate at least to take up all five "at some point" during the next Congress. As for Bush, Johnson said: "We're very happy with the support the White House has given on all of these bills. I would expect that to continue." Democrats who favor abortion rights agreed that most of those House-passed measures will get their turn in the Senate, and the Democrats predicted rapid passage of the "partial-birth" ban. Democrats were aware of the stakes when Daschle wrote in a pre-election fundraising appeal for the abortion rights group NARAL: "Rarely has so much been at stake for a woman's right to choose in a U.S. Senate election." Abortion opponents also expect a boost from Bush's judicial nominations, including the likely reconsideration of Texas Supreme Court Judge Priscilla Owen, who had been rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee for a federal appeals court. "We're going to see a philosophical revolution in the courts," said Bruce Fein, a Reagan administration lawyer. Though he said the courts will let stand the landmark Roe v. Wade decision because undoing it would be "too wrenching," he said Bush's nominees will impose a variety of new abortion restrictions. "The impact will be enormous," he said. "It will be almost as profound as if [Supreme Court nominee Robert] Bork had been confirmed." Abortion foes are unlikely to see action on their most sweeping priority, a constitutional amendment banning the practice. But they may see new restrictions on public funds going to international population-control groups. They also are likely to see congressional investigations into the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion pill. Though Bush aides have persuaded most religious conservatives not to push for abortion legislation in the lame-duck session of Congress, the real test of antiabortion patience will come on Jan. 22 -- the 30th anniversary of the Roe decision, and the date of a major march in the capital. "There's always going to be pressure around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade," Hudson said. "People who see this as a pro-life victory will want pro-life legislation to be teed up very quickly in the new Congress." © 2002 The Washington Post Company