WASHINGTON -- The House voted Thursday to override President Clinton's veto of a ban on partial-birth abortions, setting up a showdown in the Senate shortly before the fall elections.
The House vote was 296-132, 10 more than the two-thirds majority needed, and ranged across party lines. There were 219 Republicans joined by 77 Democrats, including the Democrats' leader, pro-abortion Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, to oppose the veto.
The House had voted once before, in 1996, to override a veto of a similar bill, and the debate followed predictable lines as pro-life supporters criticized Clinton's action and repeatedly denounced a "barbaric" procedure they are seeking to ban.
"We can't undo the injustice done to 35 million babies who have been exterminated because seven justices, strip mining the Constitution, found a right to abortion," said Rep. Henry Hyde, in a biting reference to the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortions more than 25 years ago.
But, the Illinois Republican added, "We can stop the barbaric butchery of partial-birth abortion. We betray our own humanity if we don't."
The override vote is one of several abortion-related issues being put before lawmakers.
Voting to sustain the veto were 123 Democrats, eight Republicans and one independent.
With the exception of cases where the mother's life is in danger, the legislation would ban a partial-birth abortions. Anyone found guilty of performing them could be jailed for up to two years, fined and exposed to lawsuits filed by the father.
Although the House vote was without suspense, the situation in the Senate is more complicated.
There, the ban cleared in May 1997 on a vote of 64-36, three shy of the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto. Since then, both sides have waged quiet campaigns to prevail - abortion rights advocates laboring to make sure they could hold onto their support and override backers hoping to find three more votes.
An Associated Press survey taken during the day showed that 35 of the 36 senators who opposed the bill when it first passed said through aides they would vote to sustain the veto. A spokesman for the 36th lawmaker, Sen. Paul Sarbanes, said it was "highly unlikely" the Maryland Democrat would switch sides and vote to override.
Said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee, "No senator has announced a change yet. It's an uphill fight for us, but not outside the realm of possibility that there could be more conversions."
In the House debate, Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., architect of the vetoed bill, urged lawmakers to "think of the babies who are subjected to this horrible procedure" and overrule "President Clinton's extremist position in support of partial-birth abortions."
Several supporters of the legislation referred to a recent case of an aborted abortion in Arizona in which a doctor discovered the unborn child was of an older gestational age than he had thought, and wound up delivering a live baby.
"Miraculously, in this instance a little girl who was marked for destruction is alive today, and a Texas couple came forward to adopt her," said Canady.
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