OSV STORY FOR MARCH 16

Blowing the whistle on partial-birth abortion

After a leading abortion lobbyist admitted to lying, questions about the 'pro-choice' movement's credibility

By Mary Meehan

When abortion lobbyist Ronald Fitzsimmons told The New York Times that he had "lied through my teeth" about partial-birth abortion, he started a firestorm that soon threatened many of his political allies.

Fitzsimmons is executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, a trade association and lobbying group for more than 200 abortion clinics.

His statements questioned the credibility of other abortion groups and made it more difficult for members of Congress to defend partial-birth abortion (also called "D & X" abortion or "intact D & E" abortion).

In it, a doctor delivers an unborn child except for its head, then punctures the base of the skull and suctions out the brain before completing delivery. This is usually done five to six months after conception, although sometimes later.

Last year, President Bill Clinton vetoed a bill to ban the procedure except to save a mother's life. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., who usually supports abortion but voted against partial-birth abortion, suggested on March 2 that the president will reassess his position in light of Fitzsimmons' statements.

Moynihan predicted that a bill banning the procedure "will pass and will be signed." Recalling that he had previously remarked that partial-birth abortion is "too close to infanticide," Moynihan said in a "Meet the Press" television appearance that it "is infanticide, and one would be too many."

Resting their reputation

Earlier, Helen Alvaré, pro-life spokeswoman for the U.S. bishops, said the Fitzsimmons story "could make a great difference" in the struggle over partial-birth abortion.

Most people who opposed the bill to ban it, she said, "did so based on some of the evidence that he now disclaims. I think it's likely that some will -- even to save face -- have to change their minds."

But a White House aide told Our Sunday Visitor March 4 that the president "has never talked about" when partial-birth abortions are done. She said the president would sign a ban if it includes an exception "to prevent serious harm" to a woman's health.

National Right to Life Committee lobbyist Douglas Johnson said the president won't sign a bill banning the procedure unless it's limited to the last three months of pregnancy, which he said wouldn't cover most partial-birth abortions.

"And that is the real killer," he said. "That's the gutting provision." Johnson assumes he'll need a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress to override a Clinton veto, which he called an "uphill" effort.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Gloria Feldt said she didn't think the Fitzsimmons controversy will result in a law banning the procedure, although she acknowledged that it has "certainly given us one more challenge."

The New York Times story on the Fitzsimmons admission was prompted by a report in the March 3 issue of American Medical News. Although The Times and other major newspapers treated the story as an individual mea culpa, American Medical News had featured Fitzsimmons' criticism of abortion groups in general for misleading press and public.

The "pro-choice movement has lost a lot of credibility" with the public and "our pro-choice friends in Congress" during the debate over partial-birth abortion, Fitzsimmons said. "Even the White House is now questioning the accuracy of some of the information given to it on this issue."

Clinton and many others have claimed the procedure is needed to save the health and childbearing ability of some women. They have stressed cases of severe fetal disability and threat to mothers' lives.

But Fitzsimmons said his early research showed that "this was being done, for the most part, in cases that did not involve those extreme circumstances."

While Fitzsimmons told American Medical News that he lied about the procedure in an interview with the "Nightline" television program in 1995, the paper reported that a large portion of the interview wasn't even used.

But Fitzsimmons told The New York Times that the lying "made me physically ill. I told my wife the next day, 'I can't do this again.' " Afterward, he watched the debate from the sidelines.

In recent interviews, Fitzsimmons made it clear that he still supports abortion, although he told The Times: "It is a form of killing. You're ending a life."

According to an Associated Press report in the Baltimore Sun, he said that "we have absolutely no apologies" for partial-birth abortion, and that "it's performed for very good reasons on women."

In the past, Fitzsimmons worked as a congressional aide and a lobbyist for what is now called the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL). His current group, the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, was started in 1990 -- partly because some clinic people felt Planned Parenthood had too much influence on an older abortion trade group, the National Abortion Federation.

Fitzsimmons told American Medical News that his side of the issue, instead of distorting the record on partial-birth abortion, would have done better "to roll over and play dead, the way the right-to-lifers do with rape and incest."

Of Congress he said: "I think we should tell them the truth, let them vote and move on."

Other abortion groups, however, see the effort to ban partial-birth abortion as the first step in a strategy to ban virtually all abortions.

"Congress should not be interfering in a doctor's judgment" on which surgical procedure to use, Feldt insisted. If Congress does interfere, she said, "then medical practice as we know it will not be the same."

Feldt suggested -- as Clinton has -- that partial-birth abortion is sometimes needed to protect a women's "future fertility." To the comment that some critics say it's more likely to lead to "cervical incompetence" (inability to carry a pregnancy to term), she responded: "But I'm not a doctor. Are you a doctor? I'd want a doctor making a judgment about that, not Congress."

Feldt was reluctant to discuss the use of partial-birth abortion in cases of fetal disability such as Down's syndrome. First she suggested that the late Dr. James McMahon of Los Angeles used it in cases of "profound fetal anomaly."

Asked if she would include Down's syndrome in that category, she said, "I am not a doctor, and I am not a woman in that situation. I wouldn't even try to make that judgment. . . . These are tough, gut-wrenching, complex, personal, moral decisions and medical decisions -- and just not Congress' business."

Feldt defended her group's credibility, saying that "we have been telling the truth [and] giving the facts as we know them." She remarked that people throughout the country "trust Planned Parenthood as a place where they can get accurate, honest information, and we rest our reputation on that."

In a March 21, 1996, statement, however, Planned Parenthood official Diana Zuckerman claimed that partial-birth abortion "is only used when the woman's life or health is in danger or in cases of extreme fetal anomaly" -- precisely the kind of statement criticized by Fitzsimmons.

Johnson, of the National Right to Life Committee, included Planned Parenthood in his charges of inaccurate information put out by his opposition. He added, "Fitzsimmons, you know, is not the offender here. . . . He is the whistle-blower."

Meehan writes from Rockville, Md.

Copyright Our Sunday Vistior, 1997; from the 3-16-97 edition

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