House Puts Antiabortion Restrictions on U.S. Aid

WASHINGTON — The House adopted new restrictions on U.S. aid to international family planning agencies Thursday, barring any funds to such organizations even if they use their own money to promote or perform abortions.

The policy, if agreed to by the Senate, sets the stage for a presidential veto of the annual $13.2-billion foreign operations appropriations bill, which contains nearly 70% of all U.S. spending on international affairs.

Ideological skirmishing broke out on a second front Thursday as Republicans and the Clinton administration clashed over education testing and a GOP proposal to allow parents to set up tax-free educational savings accounts.

The House, by a 234-191 vote, adopted the new funding restrictions on family-planning groups as an amendment to the foreign operations funding bill. The appropriations measure then passed, 375 to 49.

The earlier vote was denounced by abortion-rights advocates, including a group of House Democratic women led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

Calling the action “a swipe at women throughout the world,” Pelosi and her allies vowed to fight to kill the “global gag rule” during negotiations with the Senate, whose version of the foreign operations bill does not contain the abortion funding prohibitions.

Both measures provide about $385 million for population programs abroad, well below the president’s request of $425 million.

The administration has said the president would veto any foreign aid bill containing such restrictions. But Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), chief sponsor of the funding restrictions, said a veto would result in “less cooperation” from the GOP-dominated House “on a myriad of fronts.”

Victoria Markell, vice president of Population Action International, said Smith’s amendment “will do nothing to reduce the number of abortions,” adding: “What it will do is threaten the health of millions of women who rely on U.S.-sponsored programs for their contraceptive services.”

But without the newly adopted restrictions, Smith countered, “an organization could receive millions of U.S. tax dollars even if it cheerfully admitted to performing abortions as a method of family planning.”

House approval of the Smith amendment was the second congressional victory this week for abortion foes. On Wednesday, the Senate agreed to bar federal tax dollars from being used to pay for abortions through managed-care plans for welfare recipients. That vote came on an amendment to the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services.

Meanwhile, a House showdown is expected today on a GOP proposal to deny the Department of Education funds for new education testing programs.

On Thursday, Education Secretary Richard W. Riley told a Senate subcommittee that it was a “patriotic cause” to support a system of national reading tests for fourth-graders and math tests for eighth-graders.

But Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), author of the proposal to deny the funds, told the same panel that federally designed tests are not only unnecessary but also a threat to local control of education policy.

“This is nothing short of a recipe for disaster,” he said.

That sentiment was strongly echoed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). He told a small group of reporters: “I was a teacher, OK? I believe in testing. I also know that there are lots of instruments created in the private sector. . . . And the idea of a Washington bureaucrat suddenly doing better at this than they’ve done at everything else, you know, just strikes me as implausible.”

Gingrich was joined by Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.) as they promoted a controversial proposal to allow parents to set up savings accounts of up to $2,000 a year--with the interest shielded from taxation so long as the funds are used for educational purposes. These include private-school tuition, tutoring, transportation, books and supplies, home computers, uniforms and special education needs.

Assuming a 7.5% interest rate, a $2,000 annual contribution from year one would amount to $14,488 by the time a child reaches first grade, Coverdell said. That same account, by the time a child reaches high school, will have grown to $46,732, he added.

Gingrich and Coverdell intend to push their bill this fall. “We think this is a moral cause,” Gingrich said.

Their proposal initially was a part of the GOP budget bill, but it was killed at Clinton’s insistence.

Times staff writer Sam Fulwood III contributed to this story.