Senate sustains president's veto of abortion method ban

On September 19, the House of Representatives voted 285-137 to override President Clinton's veto of H.R. 1833, known as "The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act." One week later, the Senate upheld the veto of the bill, with 41 members voting to sustain the veto and 57 to override it. A two-thirds majority of those present and voting in each house would have been required to overturn the veto. Had the vote succeeded, it would have marked an unprecedented step by Congress to interfere with a medical procedure. The final version of the bill, which was approved by the House in March of this year and the Senate in December 1995, sought to ban an abortion method, technically termed "intact dilation and evacuation" or "dilation and extraction" (D&X), primarily used later in pregnancies in cases in which a woman's life or health is threatened, including cases of severe fetal anomaly (see RFN V/7, IV/22). The measure's vague description of the procedure to be outlawed could have also applied to the most common method of second-trimester abortions. A very limited exception in the bill would have permitted the procedure if a woman's life were "endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury," so long as no other surgical procedure could save her; an alternative method would have been required regardless of its impact on the woman's health. Physicians violating the ban would have faced fines and imprisonment for up to two years and would have been liable to suits by women's husbands and the parents of young women needing these procedures.