Abortion About-Face
EVEN BEFORE HE HAD TIME TO FEEL SETTLED IN THE Oval Office, Bill Clinton began a sweeping reversal of 12 years of Republican policy. The President on Friday signed several major White House orders. One abolished Dan Quayle's Council on Competitiveness, which critics had assailed for weakening environmental regulations. The others all concerned abortion. Clinton ended the Reagan-Bush "gag rule" on abortion counseling at federally financed clinics and lifted prohibitions on fetal-tissue research, abortion at military hospitals and funding for overseas population-control programs. Said Clinton: "We must free science and medicine from the grasp of politics." No way. Protesters who had gathered at the White House to decry the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision of 20 years ago (the coincidence of the anniversary and the orders was no coincidence whatever) blamed Clinton's "wicked counselors" and vowed to fight on.
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