BY HILDA CUZCO
Opponents of a woman's right to have an abortion have stepped up their efforts to roll back this gain with the reopening of the debate in Congress on a bill to outlaw a type of late-term abortion procedure. President William Clinton has said that he will approve the measure, if it is amended slightly. Votes are expected in both houses of Congress before the end of March.

The bill would ban a procedure medically known as "intact dilation and evacuation," or D&E. Opponents of abortion rights have demagogically dubbed it "partial-birth" abortion. If the law is adopted, doctors performing this operation could be subject to up to $250,000 in fines and two years in prison, and anybody assisting in the procedure could also be held liable. The only exception currently stipulated in the bill is if the procedure were necessary to save the life of the woman.

In April 1996, Clinton vetoed an earlier version of the bill, but said he would have signed it if exceptions were also granted in cases where pregnancy threatened a woman's health. Last December, the president told reporters that if legislators "will help me with language here and do it in good faith, I will happily sign this bill," a position he still holds.

The proposal to ban these late-term abortions was first introduced in 1993 by Republican representative from Florida Charles Canady as an amendment to the Freedom of Choice Act. That legislation, aimed at restoring some abortion rights restricted by the Supreme Court rulings in 1989 and 1992, never reached a final vote. Canady's amendment, which he argued for on grounds that the Freedom of Choice bill would have restricted states from banning late-term abortions, was narrowly defeated.

A new version of the ban on intact D&E abortions passed the House and Senate last year, accompanied by a campaign to describe the supposed "horror" of this procedure. Opponents of abortion rights produced graphic diagrams and lurid descriptions of the operation, which were widely shown on TV and in the press. The Washington Post quoted Canady in a September 1996 article as saying "The difference between the partial-birth abortion procedure and homicide is a mere three inches."

Those supporting the antiabortion bill included many legislators who in the past have said they support women's right to choose. New York Democrat Senator Patrick Moynihan, for instance, called the procedure "as close to infanticide as anything I have come upon in our judiciary." Others in this category included House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, a Democrat from Missouri, and Rep. Susan Molinari Republican from New York.

Many pundits have joined in the chorus, serving to shift the debate away from the question of women's rights. In a March 11 column in the Washington Post, for example, Richard Cohen argued, "a third-trimester fetus is too much like a child, and the D&E is too gruesome a procedure for me to approve."

The number of intact D&E abortions performed has also become a point of debate between supporters and opponents of the ban, despite the fact that there are no clear statistics. Antiabortion forces have played up recent statements by Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, a lobbying group based in Alexandria, Virginia, representing 200 abortion clinics. In February, Fitzsimmons told ABC television that he had earlier lied on how many late-term abortions are performed. Fitzsimmons said that in the "Nightline" program of November 1995, he mentioned that there were no more than 450 intact D&E procedures done a year. Now he claims the number is as high as 5,000. Proponents of the ban claim this somehow makes it more important to end the procedure.

At a March 11 hearing in Congress, representatives of abortion rights organizations debated the issue of late-term abortion. One of them, Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, stated that the issue is whether Congress should be dictating medical procedures, as well as "women's constitutional right to privacy and the protection of women's health."

Meanwhile, state legislatures in Mississippi, Colorado, and New Jersey voted in January in favor of banning "partial- birth" abortion. A similar measure was adopted last year in Michigan, but has yet to be in effect. A bill awaiting approval in the Maryland House and Senate would fine anybody performing the procedure $1,000 and subject them to up to two years in prison. The New York State Senate approved legislation March 10 that would ban D&E abortion, with penalties of up to four years in prison for doctors involved.

State governments have adopted a range of other restrictions on abortion rights as well. In January, Virginia became the 27th state in the United States to require young women under 18 to notify a parent before having an abortion.  
 
 
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