EFFORT TO DEFEND UNBORN LIFE WILL BE AN ISSUE

Week before last, the U.S. Senate took another vote on another bill banning partial-birth abortion. It passed with a hefty 63-34 majority, but it was still four votes short of the two-thirds necessary to override the inevitable veto from President Clinton. Two Republican "yes" votes were absent.

As has been the case in recent years, the bill had already passed the House of Representatives with more than a two-thirds majority. This president has vetoed such bills for four years running, and there are those who believe history won't be kind to him, or to other chief executives at the state level who have consistently blocked all efforts to end this especially gruesome and indefensible form of infanticide.

This year there was another mostly symbolic vote taken on an abortion issue on the same date. Pushed by pro-choice senators, the Senate voted on a nonbinding resolution declaring support for Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling establishing a woman's right to abortion.

The resolution was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, a liberal Democrat from Iowa. It passed by the narrow vote of 51-47. For the record, the nonbinding resolution won nearly straight (43 of 45) party-line backing from Democrats, while eight Republicans joined them in support. The Democratic votes against it were John Breaux of Louisiana and Harry Reid of Nevada. Both of Missouri's senators voted no.

We don't hide our opinion that Roe vs. Wade was bad law in 1973, and the ensuing 26 years of bitter conflict over it has dramatically strengthened that view. Overnight, seven members of the Supreme Court invented a right never before spotted in the Constitution and invalidated laws in nearly all the states. The effect, still largely unknown to many Americans, is abortion on demand through the entire nine months of pregnancy.

In saying this, it isn't necessary to argue for a ban on all abortions, either. Careful observers know that the states were at that very time moving toward relaxed laws regulating this difficult issue, reflecting the deliberate sense of the people, as filtered through their elected representatives. What the court did was to guarantee an unending and astonishingly bitter controversy that festers still. This is why even many pro-choice commentators and legal scholars join us pro-lifers in denouncing Roe vs. Wade as the bad law that it plainly is. Many compare it to the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1856 as a stain on American law.

In the meantime, we take comfort that 47 members of the U.S. Senate had the courage so to state in a nonbinding vote designed by the other side to put them in a tough position. Meanwhile, the effort to defend innocent unborn life, and especially to halt partial-birth abortion, will continue into next year's elections. Pro-lifers should work to ensure that it will be an issue next year at both the state and national levels. And for their part, Republicans mustn't repeat the mistakes of the Dole-Kemp ticket in 1996, which refused to bring up the issue in debates.