TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/120489/12048900.036

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 8KB | 155 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 43

Pro-Choice? Get Lost


Antiabortion views are a must at Health and Human Services

By Richard Lacayo


    After pro-choice voters helped defeat Republican candidates
last month in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City, George
Bush started sending out the word that the G.O.P. is big enough
to accommodate supporters of abortion rights. But pro-choice
job applicants will not find the same warm welcome at the
Department of Health and Human Services, the agency with the
heaviest responsibility for health care and family-policy
issues. HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan has become a virtual
figurehead, hemmed in by Administration pro-lifers who have made
opposition to abortion a litmus test in hiring and policy
decisions.

    Sullivan's critics say the real power at HHS is held by
White House chief of staff John Sununu, who has become the
Administration's point man against abortion. Sununu has been
instrumental in ensuring that important HHS posts have been
filled by pro-life candidates. After bumping against White
House questioning about their abortion views, several of
Sullivan's job nominees have withdrawn their names from
consideration. Says a candidate who was considered too liberal:
"It's because Sununu is resisting every nomination Sullivan
makes."

    A former president of Atlanta's predominantly black
Morehouse School of Medicine, Sullivan is said to be troubled
by complaints from colleagues in the scientific and medical
community that pro-life hectoring from the White House has
driven away some well-qualified applicants from jobs in his
department. The top spots at several important HHS divisions,
including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers
for Disease Control and the office of the Surgeon General, have
not been filled. Says a former high-ranking department official:
"Disillusionment is considerable, morale is low, and options are
few."

    Sullivan may have lost control of HHS even before he was
confirmed as its chief. Shortly after he was nominated,
Sullivan alarmed antiabortion groups by remarks he made in a
newspaper interview in which he appeared to support the Supreme
Court's pro-abortion Roe v. Wade decision. Soon after, the
beleaguered nominee met with Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a
pro-life Republican who had the power to thwart the nomination.
Hatch, who says his intervention came at the request of the
President, presented Sullivan with his own list of
pro-life-approved candidates for top jobs in the department.

    In case Sullivan did not understand that inviting the Hatch
nominees into the department was a condition of the Senator's
support, Hatch also relayed his list to Sununu, who could be
counted on to recognize a quid pro quo when he saw one. "The
Administration promised to put antiabortion people all around
Sullivan," complains Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman,
chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health and the
Environment. "They made sure he wouldn't exercise independent
judgment." Hatch brushes off all of the protests. "Bush has said
he stands for certain principles," the Senator says. "So why
should he appoint someone who is completely antithetical to his
viewpoint?"

    Though Hatch and Sullivan deny that any deal was made at
their meeting, three names on the Hatch list have got high
department posts: Constance Horner, the department's Under
Secretary; James O. Mason, Assistant Secretary for Health; and
Kay James, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. A fourth,
former Hatch staffer Antonia Novello, is the White House nominee
to succeed C. Everett Koop as Surgeon General.

    Sullivan vehemently insists that contrary to reports, it
was he, not Mason, who made the decision last month to continue
a federal ban on research in fetal-cell transplants, overruling
the recommendation of an NIH committee that the research be
continued. But there is no question that a decision to go
forward with the research, which holds promise for finding new
treatments for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and
diabetes, would have provoked a fierce test of wills between
Sullivan and Administration pro-lifers, who oppose the use of
fetal tissue in medical research.

    If Sullivan believed he could still make his mark through
lower-echelon appointments, he has since discovered that there
too Sununu has the power to thwart him. Robert Fulton, picked
by Sullivan to be director of the Family Support
Administration, withdrew from consideration after persistent
questions from the White House about his philosophy on abortion.
So did William Danforth, whom Sullivan wanted to head the NIH.
Sullivan says that while there are other reasons the NIH
director's job has been hard to fill, including questions about
salary and the Institutes' structure, the White House's phone
grilling of Danforth "made a bad situation almost impossible."

    While stressing that the questioning of his nominees was
done "without my knowledge or concurrence," Sullivan defends the
White House practice on the ground that a jobholder's views
should be in line with those of the President. "I will not
guarantee those questions will not be asked," he says. "But
they're not criteria whereby someone is selected." While
passions cool, the search for an NIH director has been
temporarily suspended.

    The turmoil at HHS is not the only problem Bush will face
as he tries to satisfy both sides of the abortion debate. Last
week the President spent a day campaigning for two pro-choice
Republicans, Congresswomen Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island,
who hopes to unseat Senator Claiborne Pell, and Lynn Martin of
Illinois, who plans to run for the Senate. Then, as he flew
back to Washington, he vetoed the budget bill for the District
of Columbia because it contained a provision that would use city
funds to pay for abortions for poor women. It was Bush's fourth
abortion-related veto this year.

    The White House also remains committed to overturning Roe
v. Wade. The Justice Department is urging the Supreme Court to
do that in two important cases it will hear this week. Both
concern state laws requiring that one or both parents be
notified before a teenager can get an abortion. By calling for
Roe to be reversed, the Justice Department has gone beyond the
position taken by the states involved, Ohio and Minnesota. They
argue that their laws could be upheld within the interpretation
of Roe that the court adopted in July, when it gave states
greater power to restrict abortion.

    The political jitters that the abortion issue is raising
has shaken one major abortion case right off the court's
calendar. The case, Turnock v. Ragsdale, involved Illinois laws
that would have required abortion clinics to be equipped like
hospitals, an imposition so costly that many would have been
forced to close their doors. Both sides thought the case was the
one this term most likely to give the court an opportunity to
repeal Roe. But after weeks of negotiation, a settlement was
announced last week between the state and the American Civil
Liberties Union, which was representing a doctor who had
challenged the rules. The state dropped the equipment
requirements while retaining its right to inspect clinics and
enforce health and safety rules.

    The deal also took Illinois Attorney General Neil F.
Hartigan off the hook. Once a man who sounded at times like a
foe of abortion, it was his department that would have argued
for the restrictions when the case came before the Supreme
Court. But Hartigan will be running for Governor next year. Now
he can campaign as a defender of -- what else? -- abortion
rights.


-- Dick Thompson and Nancy Traver/Washington