IN A PRIVATE CHAT, President-elect George W. Bush raised the issue of abortion with Colin Powell several weeks before naming him secretary of state. Bush said his administration would be pro-life. And though Powell is pro-choice, he would have to follow Bush’s lead and eliminate any vestiges of the Clinton State Department’s program to promote abortion around the world. Powell said he understood. Later, after his nomination was announced, Powell told Bush who he has in mind to be undersecretary for global affairs. This is the office, held initially in the Clinton era by former Colorado senator Tim Wirth, that master-minded the use of foreign aid and international organizations to proselytize for abortion as a method of population control. Bush thought Powell’s choice for the post was fine and would satisfy pro-life Republicans.
So how pro-life will Bush be as president? The Powell anecdote gives a pretty good idea. Bush will push the pro-life agenda in areas where it’s politically feasible. But he won’t be noisy about it. He intends, for instance, to reinstate the so-called Mexico City policy of Presidents Reagan and Bush senior that barred the use of American funds for groups promoting or performing abortions around the world. He can do this by sending a memorandum to Powell or merely by saying the old policy is restored. And he will remove Julia Taft, of the Republican Taft family of Ohio, as assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration. She’s a Clinton appointee. “She’s from the wrong side of the Taft family,” a Bush aide said, referring to the liberal Tafts, not the side of the current Ohio governor. The pro-life movement views her as pro-abortion.
Don’t expect Bush speeches to be spiked with anti-abortion comments. He rarely broached the subject during the campaign, and he probably won’t say much about it as president either. So he’ll have to be judged by his actions. One that counts is the staffing of his administration with pro-lifers. He may wind up with more pro-lifers on his White House staff than either his father or President Reagan had. His cabinet will have pro-lifers in the positions of most concern to, well, pro-lifers: John Ashcroft as attorney general, Tommy Thompson as secretary of health and human services.
Though ready to sign a bill banning partial-birth abortion, Bush won’t be able to do that soon. Tom DeLay, the House Republican whip, says it won’t come up for a vote until April or May. And maybe not then. Doug Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, calls the shots on the bill. And he’s inclined to wait until it’s clear exactly how the language of the bill should be adjusted and whether it will pass. “We don’t feel any compulsion to decide on the language in the next few weeks,” he said.
Two things have to be taken into account. One is the Supreme Court ruling last summer that approved partial-birth abortion, so long as the abortionist says it’s the safest method for the mother. Every abortionist is willing to say this, of course, or he’d be in another line of work. Whether language can be devised to circumvent the ruling and ban these abortions is uncertain, Johnson says.
In the Senate, the pro-life forces lost three votes. That reduces to 62 the number of senators who’ve voted against partial-birth abortion or are committed to doing so. But 15 of these senators have also voted to codify in federal law the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. This raises the question of whether these senators are ready to vote again to bar partial-birth abortion, knowing this time the president will sign the bill. In the past, they had a free vote, since President Clinton was certain to veto any ban.
Remember the five executive orders Clinton signed, shortly after his inauguration in 1993, to make abortions more accessible? He did so while insisting — with breathtaking hypocrisy — that he wanted abortion rare. It turns out only one of these orders, the one rescinding the Mexico City policy, is ripe for elimination. Another banned the use of fetal tissue in medical research. Now, that policy has been enacted into law by Congress. A third sought to speed up approval of RU-486, the abortion pill. This was a mere gesture, but the abortion pill has now been approved by the Food and Drug Administration anyway. Bush said during the campaign that as president, he would lack the authority to override the FDA’s action.
There’s also the order that required military hospitals to perform elective abortions. Congress stepped in to reverse that order and ban abortions at military installations. Finally, there was what the media called the gag rule, which prohibited abortion counseling at federally funded family planning clinics, which Clinton overturned. “It can’t be restored by the stroke of a pen,” says Johnson. It’s become complicated by regulatory changes. Bush hasn’t declared whether he’ll try to reinstate the rule. But if he does, he’ll likely do it as inconspicuously as possible.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
