Partial Birth

LOS ANGELES -- The nights can be long and frustrating for doctors whose shifts fall with regularity in the wee hours. A young woman comes in demanding to know if she is pregnant, then fussing for instant termination when she is found to be. An elderly lady wants a cure for her constipation. An addict arrives, angling for a legal fix.But every once in a while, like the astronomer whose long nocturnal vigils are rewarded one clear night with the smudge of a new comet on his photography plate, we sometimes encounter the extraordinary.

WASHINGTON - Setting the stage for a new legal fight over abortion, the House of Representatives gave its final endorsement yesterday to a bill that would ban a procedure opponents call "partial-birth abortion," bringing the measure a step closer to becoming law. The House approved the bill overwhelmingly, 281-142, and the Senate is expected to pass it soon. President Bush has indicated he is eager to sign the bill into law. But abortion-rights proponents are vowing to go to court to challenge the measure, which is similar to a Nebraska law the Supreme Court struck down three years ago as unconstitutional.

NO matter how they phrase it, anti-abortion advocates' efforts to craft a bill banning so-called "partial-birth" abortions fail to pass constitutional muster. When the measure comes up for a vote in the House Environmental Matters Committee, it should be killed.Maryland's attorney general says the most recent effort is unconstitutional on several grounds. It is a back-door attempt by abortion opponents to chip away at the legal right of a woman to have the procedure in this state.Abortion decisions are best left to a woman and her physician.

Political disputes over abortion aren't new. But with the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, up for Senate hearings today, supporters and opponents disagree on everything but the bill's punctuation.They argue over what, exactly, the term "partial-birth abortion" means; how often the procedure is done, and whether a ban is constitutional.And they disagree on whether Congress, instead of doctors, should be regulating a medical procedure.The bill would ban what both sides agree is a grim form of late-term abortion.

WASHINGTON -- The accusation that President Clinton cares deeply about nothing is refuted by his tenacious and guileful battle to prevent any meaningful limits on the form of infanticide known as partial-birth abortion. That battle proves that his professed desire to make abortion "rare" applies only to the fourth trimester of pregnancies.Soon -- probably in the first half of May -- the battle will be rejoined in the Senate where the minority leader, South Dakota's Tom Daschle, will offer what he will advertise as a compromise.

WASHINGTON - Galvanized by the Republican takeover of the Senate, opponents of abortion are preparing a major push for new abortion restrictions in the next Congress, beginning with a ban on the type of medical procedure they call "partial-birth abortion." Abortion opponents say they will also push for several other measures already passed by the Republican-controlled House, including a bill making it a crime to evade parental notification laws by taking a minor across state lines for an abortion, and legislation making it a separate crime to harm a fetus during an attack on a pregnant woman.

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration lawyers asked the Supreme Court yesterday to reinstate the first federal law banning a late-term abortion procedure, arguing that it should be outlawed because it is gruesome and is "never medically indicated" as a safer surgical procedure. The government's appeal asks the court to overturn the decision of a U.S. appeals court in St. Louis, which struck down the federal law as unconstitutional. It came on the same day the Senate took up the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States.

WASHINGTON - President Bush's signing of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act yesterday was a moment of political triumph for the anti-abortion movement, a reflection of its influence with a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican president. But it was also, leading abortion foes say, a validation of the movement's long-term strategy of incrementalism, restricting abortion step by step as part of the larger battle to turn public opinion against Roe vs. Wade, the sweeping 1973 Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion.

WASHINGTON -- Abortion-rights advocates in the Senate yesterday derailed a controversial bill that would outlaw "partial-birth" abortions, a development that abortion foes conceded was a resounding defeat for their legislative agenda.The anti-abortion bill, passed overwhelmingly by the House last week, was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the measure is certain to be significantly altered, with perhaps the most controversial provisions deleted.As written, the legislation would ban a rare but gruesome procedure associated with late-term abortions -- making it the first medical procedure ever to be banned by Congress.