After President Clinton vetoed the second late-term abortion ban that Congress sent him, Christian Coalition president Don Hodel vowed to wage "the mother of all veto-override battles." Clinton vetoed a bill that would have banned the dilation and extraction late-term abortion procedure - which the right-wing has named "partial birth abortion" - because it did not include an exception to save a woman's health, only to save her life. The bill, which was almost identical to a measure passed and vetoed last year, passed the House of Representatives 296-132, enough of a margin to override the veto. However, it passed in the Senate by three votes less than the 2/3 majority needed to override a veto.

As the radical right-wing continues to come up with new strategies to curtail women's right to abortion, clinics continue to suffer violence. An arson at All Women's Health Services in Portland, Oregon on October 19 caused $5,000 in damages. No one was injured and the clinic continued regular services. On the morning of President Clinton's speech at Little Rock's Central High School, two Ryder trucks were left parked in front of two Little Rock clinics, mimicking the terroristic tactic of the Oklahoma City bombing. Upon arrival, bomb-sniffing dogs detected what investigators treated as explosive devices, but in fact turned out to be road flares.

"Despite the fact that these orchestrated bomb scares were false, we strongly believe federal agents should investigate them as FACE violations," said Feminist Majority Foundation president Eleanor Smeal. "This latest terrorist attack disrupted clinic operations and resulted in the evacuation of not only the clinics, but of surrounding businesses as well." Smeal called for an investigation under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of the bomb scare. Since the beginning of 1997, seventeen clinics nationwide have suffered arsons or bombings - a number triple that of 1996.

The Feminist Majority Foundation has long contended that there is an unlawful conspiracy to commit violence against abortion clinics and to close them down. The lawsuit brought by the National Organization for Women, charging anti-abortion extremists with such an unlawful conspiracy to commit violence against clinics, will finally proceed to trial on March 2, 1998 - twelve years after it first began.

The lawsuit originated in 1986, when Eleanor Smeal was president of NOW, and charges that anti-abortion groups have violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) by conducting a conspiracy to close legitimate businesses - abortion clinics - across the country. When anti-abortion groups argued that NOW could not use RICO to bring federal charges against them the case went to the Supreme Court, which agreed in 1993 with NOW and the plaintiff clinics. Since then the case has been in U.S. District Court in Chicago, where Judge David Coar just ruled that NOW does have enough evidence of racketeering activity against the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue to proceed to trial.

Thank President Clinton for Vetoing the D&X Abortion Ban; Urge Senators to Vote Against a Veto Override!€