WASHINGTON - The House narrowly approved President Clinton's request to release foreign aid for family-planning programs yesterday in the first congressional test of the divisive abortion issue since last fall's elections narrowed the Republican House majority.
The administration mounted a major lobbying effort, including last-minute calls to lawmakers from Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, to get a victory in the president's first showdown with the new Congress.
"It's a setback for the pro-life movement," Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) told reporters. "But I don't think it's a devastating blow."
The 220-to-209 vote also marked the second day in a row in which the GOP House had failed to advance a cherished policy. On Wednesday, the House rejected a constitutional amendment to limit lawmakers' terms.
Anti-abortion forces argued that freeing $385 million for international family-planning programs on March 1 would subsidize abortions in foreign countries even though the use of U.S. funds to finance abortions is illegal.
After the House approved the president's request, lawmakers voted by a slightly larger margin, 231 to 194, to approve separate legislation offered by Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.H.) that would tie the release of the money to restoring Reagan-era restrictions on funding groups that perform or promote abortions.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said the Senate would vote on the president's request Feb. 25, and supporters said the bill has a narrow edge in that chamber.
Even though Smith's legislation faces an uncertain future in the Senate - and would almost certainly be vetoed even if it passed there - it allowed anti-abortion lawmakers who support family-planning services to cast a vote demonstrating their opposition to abortion.
Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, called that "very cowardly. ... What they did was very hypocritical."
Sixteen Republicans and 12 Democrats voted for both measures. Asked if those votes were acts of political protection, Smith said: "That would be a cynical spin that might be true."
The mix of family-planning and abortion issues made yesterday's votes an uncertain precursor of how the new House will approach abortion issues, which vexed the new GOP majority last year and produced sharp policy disagreements with Senate Republicans as well as the Clinton administration.
Republican supporters of abortion rights said they would use the outcome of the first vote to argue that their leaders should avoid anti-abortion votes as they try to reach out to voters in the Northeast, where the party suffered losses in congressional elections, and to women.
Rep. James Greenwood (R-Pa.) a moderate who led Republicans in support of the president's request yesterday, said the many votes on anti-abortion proposals in the last Congress made the Republicans appear extreme.
But anti-abortion lawmakers dismissed the importance of that vote and stressed the outcome on the second measure, which would bar the funds to going to organizations that perform or promote abortions.
"This was a gray area," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) an abortion-rights opponent, said of the president's request. "There were strong feelings on family planning, there were strong feelings on abortion."
"There's no doubt we wanted to win the first vote, but the silver lining is what we did in the second vote," said Smith, one of the leading House abortion opponents who offered the second measure.
Supporters of the president's request sought to portray the issue as support for family planning, not abortion. "This should not be an issue between pro-life and pro-choice," said Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) a leading Demoratic abortion opponent. "This is a question of justice and fairness."
Supporters said the president's position would actually decrease abortions.
"This vote is about family planning and against abortion," Rep. Constance Morella (R-Md.) said. "To decrease abortions we must increase access to family-planning services." She cited figures that the 35 percent cut in family-planning funds since fiscal 1995 has resulted in 4 million additional unintended pregnancies worldwide and 2 million more abortions.
But opponents said abortion was at the heart of the matter. The administration's policy would "further empower, strengthen and tangibly aid and abet the abortion industry overseas," Smith said.
"The U.S. should not be in the business of handing out cash to foreign countries to kill babies," Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.) said during debate.
Yesterday's vote was the result of a elaborate compromise struck between the House, Senate and White House last year when the battle over international family-planning funding threatened to block funding for much of the federal government for this year.
The House insisted on barring funding for groups that performed or promoted abortions, the policy of the Reagan and Bush administrations that Clinton reversed upon taking office in 1995. House Republicans, led by Smith, argued that the even though the U.S. funds were not used to pay for abortions, they freed other funds for that use.