c. 1998 Religion News Service

Senate fails to overturn Clinton’s veto of abortion ban

(RNS) The Senate, voting 64-36, failed again Friday (Sept. 18) to overturn President Clinton’s veto of a ban on the controversial late-term abortion procedure known by its opponents as”partial-birth abortion.”Sixty-seven votes were needed to gain the two-thirds majority needed to override.

Thirteen Democrats and 51 Republicans voted for to override. Four Republicans and 32 Democrats voted to sustain Clinton’s veto.

The controversial procedure involves partially extracting a fetus, feet first, and then collapsing the skull in the birth canal by suctioning out the brain. When Clinton vetoed the bill for a second time last October, he cited concerns the measure did not include an exception for cases in which the mother’s health is in jeopardy and a late-term abortion is medically advised.

The House of Representatives, by a vote of 296-132, voted to override Clinton’s veto.

At the Christian Coalition’s”Road to Victory”convention meeting in Washington, speakers decried the Senate vote.”Shame, shame,”some Coalition supporters shouted when Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., who spoke at the convention, announced the vote.

Lott promised that Senate Republicans would not rest until the Clinton veto is overturned.”This is not the end of the battle, this is just a skirmish,”he said.”As long as (the procedure) is in place, we will fight to stop it.” The vote also was bad news for Catholic Cardinal Bernard Law, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities. While expressing disappointment in the vote, Law also promised to continue to work for a ban.”It is a national tragedy that it remains legal to kill infants who are almost fully born,”he said in a statement.”It is a tragedy that even today some senators continued to repeat tired falsehoods on the floor of the Senate in support of this horrid procedure.” However, the vote was hailed by Phil Baum, executive director of the American Jewish Congress.”The decision to abort, at any stage, must be made by the woman in consultation with a competent medical authority,”Baum said in a statement.”Fortunately for the American people, 67 senators could not be found who were arrogant enough to consider themselves qualified to substitute their judgment for hers.” The vote came after a divided religious community worked earlier in the week to sway the Senate vote.

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the National Council of Jewish Women gathered more than 700 signatures from rabbis across the county in support of Clinton’s veto.

The letter, sent to the Senate by rabbis from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist traditions, urged that the issue be removed from political debate.”Abortion is a deeply personal issue,”they wrote.”Women are capable of making moral decisions, often in consultation with their clergy, families and physicians, on whether or not to have an abortion.” The 60-member administrative committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent the Senate a letter with the opposite position.”Overriding the veto is the right decision for every mother and child this procedure threatens,”they argued.”It is the right decision for a country whose people aspire to a greater respect for human life.” The House previously overrode Clinton’s veto of a similar bill in 1995, but the veto was sustained in the Senate.

Number of teens refraining from sex on the increase, study finds

(RNS) After 20 years of steady growth in the rate of sexual intercourse among teens, more teenagers are refraining from sex, a federal study has found.

The proportion of U.S. high school students who have had sex dropped 11 percent during the 1990s, the study reports. Young people also are less likely to have multiple sex partners and more likely to use condoms, The Washington Post reported.

The decrease marks the first time in the 1990s that fewer than half of the country’s high school students say they have had sex.

According to the survey, which was produced by the Centers for Disease Control, slightly less than 49 percent of young males reported that they had sexual experience, down from more than 57 percent in 1991. Slightly less than 48 percent of girls reported sexual experience, down from 51 percent.

The study, called the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, sought to measure the degree to which high school students are at risk of becoming pregnant or of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS.

It found that nearly 57 percent of sexually active young people had used a condom the last time they had intercourse, compared with about 46 percent in 1991. In the same period, the number of sexually active youth stating they had four or more sexual partners in their lifetime lowered from close to 19 percent to 16 percent.

Janet Collins, an author of the study and a CDC psychologist, said the figures”certainly reinforce that something important is turning around here, and it’s heading in the right direction.” But she and other researchers warned that teenage pregnancy is still more common in the United States than in other industrialized countries. Annually, 1 million teenagers become pregnant and there are 3 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases among teens.

More than 16,000 high school students completed written questionnaires on sexual activity for the biennial study last year.

Land mine treaty set to go into effect

(RNS) The African nation of Burkina Faso has become the 40th nation to ratify an international pact aimed at eliminating anti-personnel land mines, meaning the treaty will go into effect in March.

The treaty, negotiated last December in Ottawa, Canada, bans development, production, planting, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel land mines. But the major land mine producers and users _ including the United States _ have not signed the treaty.

Some 130 nations have signed the treaty and are in the process of ratifying it, generally in their legislature.

Land mines are blamed for killing or maiming about 25,000 people a year, primarily civilians, often women and children.”It is especially encouraging that mine-affected countries on three continents, including Bosnia, Croatia, Mozambique, Yemen and Zimbabwe are among the first 40 countries to ratify,”Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement following the action by Burkina Faso on Wednesday (Sept. 16).

Sommaruga said that implementing the treaty _ which gives nations four years from ratification to destroy stockpiles and 10 years to carry out mine clearance _ would be challenging, Reuters reported from Geneva.”The setting up of mine-clearance and mine-awareness programs and the organization of assistance for victims have only just begun and will require the mobilization of resources at national and international levels for years to come,”he said.

In addition to the United States, China, India, Pakistan and Russia have refused to sign the treaty.

The United States has refused to sign the pact because it says it needs anti-personnel mines along the border between North and South Korea.

Update: Experts debate whether slain bishop’s body shows dog bites

(RNS) Experts investigating the death of slain Guatemalan Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi disagreed Friday (Sept. 18) over whether the exhumed body of the prelate bore dog bite marks.

Gerardi was killed in April just days after releasing a church-sponsored report blaming military and paramilitary forces for extensive human rights abuses during Guatemala’s three decade-long civil war.

Evidence of a dog bites is key for government prosecutors in the case, who contend Gerardi was killed for personal rather than political reasons. They maintain a fellow priest and the priest’s pet German shepherd fatally attacked Gerardi.”There is no evidence of a dog bite or bites,”said Robert Bux, a medical examiner from San Antonio, Texas, said Friday (Sept. 18), the day after Gerardi’s body was exhumed for a second autopsy.

But a Spanish medical anthropologist who participated in the autopsy insisted Gerardi fended off a dog during the fatal attack.

Gerardi’s death was caused by his head being crushed with a cement block.

Nine forensic experts from three countries jostled each other for a view of the body and could not come up with a consensus on the dog bites.

Mario Guerra, head of the medical forensic team at Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office, said the second autopsy confirmed the results of the first autopsy, which did not find any dog bites.

Quote of the day: Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va.

(RNS)”Let’s see. We’ve had three. I figure we’ve got just about 532 to go, including me between my two marriages. There aren’t many people with an ounce of testosterone in them who’ve had the unblemished record that our fifth-grade nuns would have wished for.” _ Rep. James Moran, D-Va., commenting Friday (Sept. 18) in USA Today on the spate of recent revelations concerning past sexual indiscretions of members of Congress now surfacing in the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

IR END RNS