Is support of abortion political suicide?

The 93rd Congress had barely convened in January 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its sweeping decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton declaring unconstitutional almost all state laws on abortion. The Court ruled that states could not regulate first-trimester abortions if performed by physicians; could impose regulations during the second trimester only to protect the health of the pregnant woman; and, in the third trimester, could proscribe abortions only if the woman's life or health was not placed in jeopardy. (1) The decisions climaxed a rapidly growing movement to legalize abortion which began in 1967 with the adoption of a statute reforming Colorado's restrictive abortion law, and which led to the liberalization of abortion laws in 17 other states (*) and the District of Columbia before the Roe and Doe decisions. This movement was paralleled in many other countries of the world. As in the United States, liberalization of restrictive abortion laws has been accompanied by acrimonious public d ebate and emotional, sometimes dramatic, political confrontations (most recently in France). Abortion is now legal in 29 countries containing more than 60 percent of the world's population. (2)

In the United States, prior to the Supreme Court decisions, the power to regulate abortion was left to the individual states. Although members of Congress surely were aware of the raging controversies about abortion in the legislatures of their home states, they kept purposely aloof from the issue. Congress did in 1970 restrict the use of federal family planning project grant funds (under Title X of the Public Health Service Act) to contraceptive and sterilization services, and specifically excluded abortion "as a method of family planning." (3) This action was not, however, meant by Congress to restrict, in any way, the use of other federal funds to pay for abortion services in those states where abortion laws had been liberalized. The conference report accompanying the 1970 family planning legislation made it clear that this particular piece of legislation was intended to reflect the priority concern of Congress with the prevention of unwanted pregnancies:

It is, and has been the intent of both Houses that the funds authorized under this legislation be used only to support preventive family planning services, population research, infertility services, and other related medical, informational and educational activities. (4)

The conference report also documented the reluctance of Congress to interfere with lawful activities financed with funds other than those authorized through the 1970 family planning legislation:

The legislation does not and is not intended to interfere with or limit programs conducted in accordance with State or local laws and regulations which are supported by funds other than those authorized under this legislation. (5)

It cannot have escaped the attention of members of Congress prior to Roe and Doe that federal-state programs financing general medical care (including pregnancy-related care), such as Medicaid, were already paying for abortion services for large numbers of Medicaid recipients in California and New York, and that the extent of such support continued to grow between 1970 and 1973 as increasing numbers of states liberalized their abortion laws. For six years after 1967, not a single bill was introduced, much less considered, in Congress to curtail the use of federal funds for abortion. It was not until late 1973 that Senator James L. Buckley (R.-N.Y.) introduced the first (6) of what were to become a string of riders and amendments to other bills which would have banned Medicaid or other federal payments for abortion. These subsequent attempts (along with the introduction of numerous constitutional amendments to give the unborn fetus a federally protected "right to life" or to give the states the power to regula te abortion) coincided with the establishment of highly vocal lobbies throughout the country dedicated to the reversal of Roe and Doe and the absolute legal prohibition of abortion in the United States.

Legal decisions of such scope and importance as the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion could have been expected to produce consternation, as well as antagonistic reactions among some members of Congress. Yet, in the ordinary course of events, it seems unlikely that so many congressmen would have continued to be preoccupied with the abortion issue through the 1973 and 1974 sessions of Congress. For that to have occurred required an unrelenting succession of petitions, demonstrations (in Washington and the home districts), phone calls, telegrams, letters (often accompanied by soft focus photographs of human embryos and fetuses or gory pictures of their destruction), pickets and direct threats of primary campaigns or retaliation in the general elections from organized opponents of legal abortion throughout the 93rd Congress. Pressure, sometimes vehement, from organized groups is a common fact of life on Capitol Hill. (Witness the recent campaigns for school prayer and capital punishment or against amnesty and busing.) However, members of Congress are rarely accused of being "murderers," either because of their support of Supreme Court decisions or their refusal to endorse constitutional amendments.