< Advocates Want Bush Abortion Policies Reversed

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Heard on All Things Considered

December 11, 2008 - ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Now to an area of policy that can be politically perilous - reproductive health. The Obama administration comes into office with different views than the Bush administration on topics such as abortion and family planning. As part of our series of "Memos to the President-elect," NPR's Julie Rovner finds that Mr. Obama may be more successful in navigating these matters than his predecessors.

JULIE ROVNER: The new president has made his position on abortion very clear. He wants it to remain legal.

President-elect BARACK OBAMA: What I have said is that women should make the decision in consultation with their priest, or pastor, their doctor, their family members, and in consultation with their beliefs.

ROVNER: But as on so many other issues, President-elect Obama also wants to find that elusive consensus which he outlined during the final presidential debate in October.

(Soundbite of presidential debate)

President-elect OBAMA: There surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, we should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.

ROVNER: OK, Mr. President-elect. Here's the bad news. Pretty much every president says he wants to find common ground on abortion and other reproductive health issues, except there's not that much common ground to be found. What you'll find instead are expectations from the pro-choice groups that supported you during the campaign. Nancy Keenan is president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Ms. NANCY KEENAN (President, NARAL Pro-Choice America): We've had eight years of George W. Bush anti-choice efforts, and there's got to be, first, initial work in reversing all of the negative that has happened over these past eight years.

ROVNER: For example, they're expecting that you'll use your new executive authority to reverse the so-called global gag rule. It bars U.S. aid to international family planning groups that perform or in any way advocate for abortion. They're also expecting you to overturn President Bush's limits on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Abortion rights groups will expect you to do this just two days after you take office. That's the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

But most other changes would take legislative action by Congress. Things like repealing the Hyde Amendment that bars federal funding of abortions for poor women. Also, adding exceptions to the federal ban on so-called partial birth abortion. On those, abortion rights opponents are already gearing up to defend their ground. Douglas Johnson is federal legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.

Mr. DOUGLAS JOHNSON (Legislative Director, National Right to Life Committee): We're going to mount a very vigorous defense of the existing pro-life policies. The ban on partial-birth abortions, the Hyde Amendment, and these other policies have broad popular support, and they were won with great effort. And we certainly are going to defend them to the best of our ability.

ROVNER: But there is some good news for you, Mr. President-elect. When Bill Clinton took office 16 years ago, abortion rights groups had an ambitious agenda and expectations to match. They quickly discovered they lacked both the votes and the public support to make many of the changes they wanted. This time around, they're taking a much more pragmatic attitude, says Nancy Keenan of NARAL.

Ms. KEENAN: You've got to be practical. You've got to be realistic here. And we've got to make sure that the agenda is not divisive, that the tone of the debate changes, and that we make sure that we can find areas that we can agree on first.

ROVNER: Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood says for her group, those areas start with providing basic women's health services.

Ms. CECILE RICHARDS (President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America): This past administration did really nothing to help expand access to things like preventive health care. We know that in the reproductive health care arena, there's so much you could do by providing affordable family planning, providing affordable cervical cancer screenings and breast cancer screenings, which we do hundreds of thousands of every year.

ROVNER: But the elephant in the room, if you'll pardon the expression, is going to be your health care overhaul, if there is one. Abortion rights groups are going to want to make abortion part of any new national health plan, and abortion opponents are going to fight that hard. Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.

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