
DATE: Tuesday, November 18, 1997            TAG: 9711180220

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Focus 

SOURCE: BY ELSA C. ARNETT, KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:  135 lines

FOCUS: NEW ERA IN ABORTION FIGHT WITH THE GENERAL PARAMETERS OF ABORTION DEFINED - FOR NOW - BY COURT DECISIONSAND PRESIDENTIAL VETOES, THE BATTLE HAS MOVED TO THE MIDDLE GROUND, WHERE THE TWO SIDES ARE SPARRING OVER DETAILS.

For years, the abortion fight has been waged with in-your-face protests in front of abortion clinics and with graphic pictures of bloody fetuses.

Now, abortion foes are increasingly relying on a quieter strategy of carefully targeted political pressure. The goal isn't to fundamentally change abortion policy; it is to make gradual, but steady headway - or make adversaries pay a price if they don't go along.

Judging by last week's events, the new approach is working.

Abortion opponents in Congress wanted to bar aid to international family-planning groups that promote, perform or support abortion with their own money. But President Clinton refused. So abortion opponents retaliated.

They struck back by withholding votes for a bill expanding Clinton's authority to negotiate trade agreements. Without their support, Clinton couldn't get the last few votes he needed to pass the bill in the House.

They struck back by derailing a painstakingly negotiated plan for Congress to make overdue payments to the United Nations - at a time when the Clinton administration is trying to round up U.N. support for tough action against Iraq.

They struck back by blocking money for the International Monetary Fund to shore up weak economies overseas - at a time when the administration wanted to help calm jittery international markets.

And in a related development, they blocked confirmation of Clinton's choice for surgeon general, Dr. David Satcher, because he agrees with Clinton's position on ``partial birth'' abortions.

As an election year looms, both sides predict that abortion will be injected into all sorts of matters.

``This is going to pop up anywhere as a part of legislation,'' said Debra Dodson, senior researcher at Rutgers University Center for the American Woman and Politics.

``People often times think that the abortion issue isn't relevant to politics today because it's been settled by the Supreme Court, but there are many issues firmly planted in the political realm, and there are a myriad of battles to fight,'' Dodson said.

With the general parameters of abortion already defined by court decisions and presidential vetoes, the battle has moved away from the extremes of allowing every kind of abortion or ending all abortions, to the middle ground, where both sides can spar over the details of regulations and policies.

``Under this president, incremental gains are about all we can realistically hope for at the federal level, so we are making some progress,'' said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest anti-abortion group.

``No one really thinks we're going to ban abortions anytime soon,'' said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University government professor and author of a book on abortion. So, he said, abortion advocates and opponents are ``negotiating around the margins, jockeying for political position, to try to get what they can, when they can.''

Right now, the anti-abortionists have the upper hand, buoyed by a Republican-controlled Congress where more than half of the senators and two-thirds of the representatives oppose abortion.

Since Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, for the first time since the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision protected women's right to abortion, 81 abortion-related votes have occurred on the House and Senate floors. And abortion foes prevailed in 71 of them, according to figures compiled by an abortion-rights group, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL).

While many of those votes were minor or repetitive, the National Right to Life's Johnson said about 10 votes resulted in significant policy changes.

``We've gotten more than half-a-dozen substantive changes in the law that we couldn't have done before,'' Johnson said. ``These votes make a difference not only symbolically, but because we also believe they have saved lives.''

Among their victories this year: federal employees are banned from choosing health insurance that covers abortion. Also, women serving in the U.S. military overseas, or military dependents overseas, cannot get an abortion at a military hospital even if they pay for it with their own money. And women in federal prisons can't have abortions.

Some abortion experts say these provisions succeeded because they focused on subtle points that don't register on most people's radars.

``These efforts are most effective when they don't try to constrain middle-class women's access to abortion,'' said Margaret Little, a senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, a Washington-based bioethics think tank. ``They just seem to put a few regulations in the way, but they don't directly threaten access for most people, so the American public is relatively complacent about it.''

The anti-abortionists' success is even drawing grudging admiration from their opponents.

``If they tried to outwardly attack abortion, they would fail miserably and create an enormous backlash in the country because the majority of people support a woman's right to choose,'' said Kate Michelman, president of NARAL in Washington, D.C.

So, she said, ``They are trying hard to dismantle our constitutional rights in a piecemeal way that won't alarm the American public.''

Still, Michelman said, ``these sinister attempts to blackmail the president are part of an intensive and systematic campaign to deny women their right not just to safe, legal abortions, but to access to family-planning programs which reduce the need for abortion.''

Expect more of the same tactics when Congress reconvenes in January.

``I can see even much stronger efforts in the next session because we are really going to up the ante,'' said Kate Fitzgerald, director of public policy for the American Life League, an anti-abortion group in Stafford, Va.

Last week's flurry of activity confirms that even when it isn't in the spotlight, abortion remains a potent issue.

``When you cease to see it brought up, it would mean that there's been some consensus reached in America,'' said Rutgers' Dodson. ``But clearly, we are not near that point.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Photo]

Abortion Battles

Here are the main abortion issues that have come before Congress

this year:

Congress passed the ``Partial Birth Abortion'' bill, which bans

and criminalizes certain late-term abortion procedures, but

President Clinton vetoed the legislation. Abortion opponents are

expected to try to override the veto next year.

Congress banned abortion for women in federal prisons.

Congress barred federal employees from choosing health insurance

that covers abortion.

Congress prohibited women serving in the U.S. military overseas,

or military dependents overseas, to get an abortion at a military