ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 14, 1997 TAG: 9702140072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
A bill to outlaw partial-birth abortions died in a Senate committee Thursday after a legislator changed her vote.
Sen. Emily Couric at first voted for banning a procedure in which a doctor suctions the brain out of a fetus before it is completely delivered. She was the lone Democrat on the Senate Education and Health Committee to support the bill, joining the panel's seven Republicans to pass the measure, 8-7.
Then, Senate Democratic Leader Richard Saslaw of Fairfax County spoke briefly with Couric, and she asked for another vote. The second time, she joined her fellow Democrats and voted no, killing the bill by one vote.
``The implications of this bill being put on the floor of the Senate were clarified for me,'' said Couric, a first-term senator from Charlottesville.
Couric said after the meeting that she feared anti-abortion legislators would try to amend the bill to impose broader restrictions ``limiting a woman's right to choose.''
A Senate bill banning partial-birth abortions was killed by the same committee earlier in the session. The version the committee considered Thursday was a much weaker one approved by the House.
One provision in the House bill would permit the procedure on fetuses that could not survive outside the womb. Another provision would allow the procedure for women in endangered health.
Because the U.S. Supreme Court has defined health so broadly that it includes such things as a woman's mental condition, the ``endangered health'' provision would have rendered the bill virtually moot.
``This bill is filled with so many exceptions that even President Clinton would sign this bill,'' the bill's sponsor, Del. Roger McClure, R-Fairfax County, said during a break. ``We can always hope they will amend it on the Senate floor.''
The possibility of amendments is what prompted Couric to change her vote. ``It has been brought to my attention that this bill might be used in the future as a vehicle for action on measures to which I am opposed,'' she said.
Congress voted last year to ban partial-birth abortions, but Clinton vetoed it in April. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., has promised to reintroduce the bill this year.
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1997by CNB