TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/120489/12048900.036

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 8KB | 140 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nominees have withdrawn their names from consideration.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