Democrats yield to pro-lifers.

Republicans in the House and Senate, on a rampage to restrict abortion, have passed seventy-one bills since 1995 to limit reproductive choice for women. Recently, the House voted 296 to 132 to overturn President Clinton's veto of a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion. The Senate will hold a veto-override vote around Labor Day, timed for the midterm election campaigns. Emboldened by all their successes, House pro-lifers in July even took a swipe at federal health coverage for some common forms of birth control--including the pill--which they consider "abortifacients." Margaret Sanger would be horrified.

Where are the Democrats, as the Republicans try to turn back the clock? Defensive, divided, running for cover.

Since 1995, the Republicans have gained ground in part because many Democrats have gone along, fearful of losing their seats over reasonable-sounding issues like late-term abortion and parental consent.

The most significant gain pro-lifers have made is in the debate over partial-birth abortion, where Democrats switched their votes in droves, becoming converts to the pro-life cause on this issue. Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, after first voting against the broadly worded ban, last year turned around and proposed his own ban to compete with the Republicans. In a sign of the times, Daschle's rating from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) dropped from 99 percent in 1995 to 65 percent in 1997.

In a recent vote in the House on the confusingly named Child Custody Protection Act, progressive Democrats joined Republicans to pass a bill that would make it a crime to help a young woman cross state lines to get an abortion without her parents' permission, if her home state requires parental consent.

Leftwing Democrats David Bonior of Michigan, David Obey of Wisconsin, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, and Carolyn McCarthy of New York all voted for the bill.

McCarthy, who up until now had a 100 percent pro-choice voting record, said she makes a distinction when it comes to minors. "I feel very strongly, as a parent, that all efforts should be exhausted in order to encourage a minor to talk with her parents about the pregnancy," said McCarthy. "If this bill forces one child to establish a line of communication with her parents, then I think it's a good effort."

Kucinich, who has only a 12 percent approval rating from NARAL, is simply prolife. (He opposes U.S. funding for international family planning on anti-abortion grounds.)

Obey, who has a 45 percent NARAL rating, offered the unsatisfying explanation that he felt it was important to respect other states' laws, and that, anyway, people in Wisconsin, where parental consent is not required, would not be affected.

Bonior, the Minority Whip in the House, who could try to pull Democrats together to present a united front, also has a mixed record (40 percent pro-choice). He opposes an outright ban on abortion, but votes for most restrictions.

Maybe many Democrats truly believe that laws enforcing parental notification, or setting parameters on specific abortion procedures, make useful moral distinctions in a murky and troubling area. But the net effect of these limits is a massive concession. Rather than defending the post-Roe theory that abortion ought to be a private matter best left up to individual conscience, these Democrats are letting themselves be carried along by a current that creates all kinds of new federal crimes related to abortion. With the acquiescence of Democrats, intervention by the state is the new norm.

Under the Child Custody Protection Act, a friend or relative who takes a young woman out of state for a legal abortion could be tracked down and arrested by federal agents. This represents a huge expansion of government power--which is why even some Republicans, including Scott Klug of Wisconsin, opposed it.

"What's next?" asked Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of Manhattan. "If someone from New York, where gambling is illegal, takes a friend to Atlantic City, are we going to arrest them?"

No one denies that it would be best if girls who are facing unwanted pregnancies could turn to their parents. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to bring in the FBI to enforce such talks.

The most compelling story in the debate was an anecdote about a young woman in Colorado named Spring Adams, whose father got her pregnant, and then shot and killed her when he found out she was seeking an abortion. Clearly not all young women can turn to their parents. The Child Custody Protection Act only applies to the difficult cases--the minority of pregnant girls who don't believe they can count on their parents to help them. Its effect would be to further isolate those girls, making it dangerous for them to turn to another adult friend or relative.

The young and poor have been losing access to abortion for years. But now even female members of Congress are affected. In a telling moment on the House floor, Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, stood, surrounded by a group of female colleagues in brightly colored suits, to argue passionately for allowing federal employees to choose health insurance plans that cover abortion. A row of Republican men in dark blue and gray watched, impassive, as she gestured angrily at them.

Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, spoke after DeLauro in support of her amendment, invoking the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention where the women's rights movement was born. "We are losing ground for women," she said. "This Congress has acted again and again and again toward the gradual erosion of women's right to choose. I remember when I received my notice [letting women on the federal payroll know they could no longer get health-insurance coverage for abortion]. It was a chilling moment to see in writing a specific act by this Congress rolling back choice for women." When the ladies were done talking, the House quickly defeated the DeLauro Amendment. There was never really a question about its survival.

Belle Taylor-McGhee of NARAL tries to put a positive spin on recent votes in the House. "This is the failure of social conservatives to achieve their true agenda, which is to outlaw abortion," McGhee says. "So they're just targeting the most vulnerable people--people who rely on federal help for health care, for example, and trying to single them out."

But pro-choice advocates are whistling in the dark. Abortion isn't illegal yet, but for many groups of women it might as well be. And lawmakers have undermined the fundamental principles of private, uncoerced choice and nonintervention by the state.

One of the rich ironies of the current abortion debate is that those who favor further restrictions on abortion invoke the awful bind young women are in because of the very restrictions the anti-choice legislators have imposed. During debate on the Child Custody Protection Act, Henry Hyde, Republican of Illinois, described how terrible it is for a young woman to have to cross state lines, alone and frightened, without the knowledge of her parents, to go to an abortion clinic. Yet it is precisely because of the restrictions Hyde and others champion that young women find themselves in such extreme circumstances.

The greatest irony, though, was the House debate on birth control. Representative Christopher Smith, Republican of New Jersey, and an ardent pro-lifer, led the charge against the amendment sponsored by Nita Lowey, Democrat of New York, that would require federal employees' health insurance plans to cover birth control. Smith circulated a letter from the National Right to Life Committee, explaining why that group opposes not only abortion, but also the pill, Depo-Provera, the IUD, and Norplant, because these methods flush a fertilized egg out of the uterus before implantation. The Right to Lifers consider this murder.

After arguing strenuously against allowing women who work for the federal government to obtain abortions under their health insurance plan, Smith rose moments later to argue that the government should not cover birth control, either.

The Lowey Amendment passed anyway. It's a measure of how far we've slid that this was considered a victory.

Ruth Conniff is Washington Editor of The Progressive.