Prochoice Bills Progress
Despite recent court setbacks, congressional advocates of abortion have been pushing their legislative agenda on a fast track in the House and the Senate. Days after the Supreme Court upheld the Reagan/Bush “Mexico City Policy,” which denies funds to family-planning organizations that promote legal abortion activities in the Third World, the House of Representatives voted to overturn it legislatively. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a similar bill.
Last month, the House voted to preserve $20 million for the United Nations Population Fund, a group whose U.S. funding was restricted in the past due to charges that it supported China’s population-control policies, which have promoted abortion.
The House also voted overwhelmingly last month to approve a bill that would lift the administration’s ban on counseling and referring for abortions at federally funded family-planning clinics. The Supreme Court upheld the ban in May (CT, June 24, 1991, p. 52). The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee also approved a similar bill. The measure is expected to come to a full vote in Senate by the end of this month.
The House Energy and Commerce committee voted to lift the Bush administration’s ban on the use of federal money to pay for scientific research using fetal tissue obtained by induced abortions. And prochoice groups are lobbying heavily for passage of the “Freedom of Choice Act,” which would prohibit states from restricting abortion on demand. Bush has promised vetoes of all prochoice legislation.
Broadcast Ban Overturned
The U.S. Court of Appeals has overturned the federal government’s all-day ban on the broadcast of indecent material on radio and television. The three-judge panel ruled that the ban was “unconstitutionally vague.”
Requested by Congress in 1988 and endorsed by the Federal Communications Commission last year, the rules forbid the broadcast of material that describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in “patently offensive” terms (CT, Aug. 20, 1990, p. 47). The rules have not yet been enforced, pending the litigation, which is probably not yet complete.
“Everyone on both sides expected that the ultimate decision would be in the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Robert Showers, head of litigation for the Washington, D.C., law firm Gammon and Grange. Showers represented a coalition of religious broadcasters, profamily groups, and denominations in a brief urging the Court to uphold the rules. He is confident the high court will accept the case.
Prolifers Not Racketeers
Federal antiracketeering laws may not be used against prolife demonstrations staged in front of abortion clinics, according to a ruling issued last month by a U.S. district court. Judge James Holderman dismissed a lawsuit brought by the National Organization for Women and several abortion clinics that charged prolife activists with violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
“The motivation for destroying clinic property, among other alleged acts, was not to obtain money, but rather to otherwise further their anti-abortion cause by limiting the availability of abortion services and winning publicity for their cause,” the judge wrote, explaining why RICO did not apply.
“[This] decision may go a long way to protect prolife demonstrators and a wide range of other parties engaging in noneconomic boycotts and purely political civil disobedience from the civil RICO dragnet,” said Edward Grant, counsel for Americans United for Life in Washington, D.C.
Around Town
Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association (AFA) dropped its lawsuit against National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) general counsel Julianne Ross Davis after she agreed to apologize and retract critical statements she made about the AFA during a speech last year. Meanwhile, a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the NEA brought by the Rutherford Institute charging the agency with funding “sacrilegious, defamatory and scurrilous” art.
The Christian AIDS ministry Love & Action was a cosponsor of the First National Children with HIV/AIDS Awareness Day rally in front of the Capitol last month. About 200 people, including many families affected by AIDS, participated. Love and Action carried a banner reading, “Jesus loves the little children with HIV/AIDS.”
In 1989, Pat Robertson launched WNTR, a suburban Washington all-talk radio station that he hoped would become the flagship for a national conservative radio network (CT, Dec. 15, 1989). That plan has apparently stalled. WNTR has suspended all original programming and is selling time to programs that include “Murray’s Auto Show,” “Voice of Ethiopia,” and “Khalistan News and Views.”
Former White House aide Doug Wead says he plans to stay involved in politics through a new syndicated television program that will air on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Wead, former special assistant to the President for public liaison, was dismissed from his government post last year after a series of internal White House controversies (CT, Sept. 10, 1990, p. 60). On “There’s More to the Story,” Wead will air interviews with various politicians and newsmakers.
