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US House panel votes to lift Bush abortion rule
( 2001-05-03 12:24 ) (7 )

A US House of Representatives panel voted on Wednesday to reverse President George W. Bush's ban on providing U.S. funds to family planning groups that perform or advocate abortions overseas.

Dealing Bush his first foreign policy setback in Congress, the House International Relations Committee voted 26-22 to overturn Bush's prohibition on U.S. aid to groups based abroad that provide abortions with their own funds or counsel women on abortion. Three Republicans supported the move.

Bush had revived the so-called Mexico City policy in January as one of his first acts in office. It restored a rule first announced by former President Ronald Reagan at a Mexico City conference in 1984 and rescinded by ex-President Bill Clinton in 1993.

"This is a major victory," said Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat who sponsored the amendment to a broader State Department authorization bill. "My amendment is about ensuring that international family planning services, which can prevent abortions, can be delivered to millions of women and men all over the world."

Republicans were confident the panel's action would be reversed on the House floor, perhaps as early as next week. But Democrats said they expected another close vote and promised an all-out push to keep the language in the broader bill, which provides for repayment of most of the U.S. debt to the United Nations.

FIGHT MOVES TO HOUSE FLOOR

"The real fight will be on the floor of the House of Representatives," said Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican who has led the charge for the abortion rule during annual battles in Congress over the last decade.

Under U.S. law no tax dollars have directly paid for abortions since 1973. The rule prohibits giving U.S. funds to groups that spend their own money for abortions or counseling.

Critics of the rule said it was an affront to free speech rights and could lead to even more risky abortions worldwide by denying crucial family planning counseling.

But supporters of the ban shrugged off those arguments, saying the U.S. funds allowed those family planning groups to pay for abortions out of other accounts.

"One would have to be blind to not understand the precise nature of this amendment," Smith said. "The millions of dollars we give to a group immediately frees up other non-U.S. funds that can be used -- and have been used -- for performing and aggressively promoting abortion."

Family planning groups hailed the vote as a crucial step toward protecting women's lives worldwide. "President Bush is out of step with the American people," said Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Bush's order reversed last year's agreement between Clinton and the Republican-led Congress to allow federal funds to international family planning groups that offer abortion services and lobby for abortions overseas.

Clinton had suspended the aid restrictions in 1993, but infuriated abortion rights proponents in 1999 by reluctantly agreeing to include them in return for Congress freeing up more than $900 million in arrears owed to the United Nations.

He was able to partially waive the rule before reaching another deal with lawmakers last year in which the aid restrictions were lifted but funds could not be distributed until Feb. 15 of this year, after Bush took office.

The House panel's vote links the issue once again with the U.N. dues payments, and committee chairman Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican, warned it could lead to a veto of the bill if the language remained in place.

Republicans Jim Leach of Iowa and Benjamin Gilman and Amo Houghton of New York voted with the Democrats on reversing Bush's abortion rule.

"The Democrats stood united without a single defection. The Republicans were divided," ranking committee Democrat Tom Lantos of California said after the vote, which he called a "good omen" for the battle in the full House.

The committee on a voice vote approved the broader bill, which authorizes $7.8 billion in fiscal 2002 funding for the State Department and related agencies and includes a U.S. arrears payment to the United Nations of $582 million.