Abortion Foes

WASHINGTON -- In a surprising reversal, abortion foes in the House of Representatives voted yesterday to override President Clinton's veto of a bill that would outlaw a late-term abortion procedure denounced by its critics as infanticide.In a 285-137 vote, House lawmakers rejected arguments that the ban would deny women who are experiencing crises pregnancies access to a procedure that could protect their health and future fertility. Opponents said the procedure is grotesque and brings a painful end to a life.

WASHINGTON -- After a quarter-century of research and a decade of controversy, the French abortion pill gained yesterday the federal government's conditional approval for ending pregnancies privately and without surgery.Potentially moving most abortions out of clinics and away from the conflicts outside those facilities, the Food and Drug Administration said that RU-486 appears safe and effective "when used under close medical supervision" to induce abortions.RU-486, an invention of a French scientist, is formally known as mifepristone.

WASHINGTON -- Taking a militant page from the opposition's strategy manual, the abortion rights lobby is targeting 15 vulnerable freshman Republicans in the House for defeat, preparing to publicize their votes on more than a score of anti-abortion measures as too fervid for their moderate suburban constituencies.All of these freshmen won by margins of less than 5 percentage points two years ago, and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League has rated them the most susceptible to defeat in November.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, in vetoing the bill that would ban what abortion foes call ''partial-birth'' abortions, insisted that ''this is not about the pro-choice, pro-life debate'' and ''not a bill that should have ever been injected into that.'' He should have been so lucky.Given the degree to which abortion has been politicized before and ever since the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing a women's right to have an abortion, it was inevitable that this bill would be seized upon by the anti-abortion forces to dramatize their side of the argument.

WASHINGTON - Returning to the field of conflict outside abortion clinics, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to spell out judges' power to keep protesters at a distance from pregnant women.Less than two years after laying down ground rules on limiting clinic blockades, the justices selected a new case from upstate New York to focus on the constitutionality of buffer zones that surround women and clinic staff members and remain with them as they enter and leave the vicinity of an abortion center.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- In a Republican presidential field where control and discipline are equated with success, longshot candidate Alan Keyes is like a man navigating in the dark, blind to the surprises that can come with each new campaign day.Over one recent 24-hour campaign cycle, a snowbound car forced him to cancel a meeting with influential pastors, aides scheduled a last-minute luncheon speech over fried chicken nuggets and the candidate arrived for...

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department, after 16 months, has found "no direct evidence" that anti-abortion activists have joined in a national conspiracy to stage violence against abortion clinics and doctors. But department officials said yesterday that they won't stop looking for signs that clinic attacks are linked.Lawyers and investigators who have been looking for a broad conspiracy are narrowing their emphasis to more isolated cases of violence. There is "no direct evidence of a single, nationwide conspiracy," one official familiar with the probe said.

WASHINGTON -- Tens of thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Washington yesterday, as they have each of the last 22 years on the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, to press the government for changes in the law.On this occasion, a principal focus of the march was to support legislation that would outlaw a rarely used late-term form of abortion. Both the Senate and the House have passed versions of such a bill, but President Clinton has said he will veto it.Both sides in the abortion debate see the legislation as important, as it is the first time since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 that Congress has voted to ban any method of abortion.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- The anti-abortion forces in the Republican Party appear to be enjoying a renewed sense of power and influence as the presidential campaigns of the only three potential candidates favoring abortion rights have either ended or appear to be going nowhere.As delegates to the Iowa Right to Life Committee gathered yesterday in Des Moines for their annual convention, there was a feeling among them that their movement was in the ascendancy within the party and that their influence on the Iowa presidential caucuses in February would be considerable because of their grass-roots organization.

WASHINGTON -- Abortion doctors, saying they now fear for their lives as targets of militant foes of abortion, joined with clinics yesterday to open a new front in a nationwide legal war.A lawsuit filed in Portland, Ore., seeking a minimum of $200 million in damages to be paid to doctors and clinics nationwide, is the second major legal assault taken to federal courts in recent years and is a sign of an escalation of courtroom battles against anti-abortion forces.Earlier...