Mixing Up the Signals : ‘New’ gag rule on abortion counseling may mean nothing new at all

George Bush’s latest act in our agonized national drama about legal abortion is possibly his most cynical. Although in actuality still pandering to a minority bent on stamping out legal abortions, the President would have Americans believe he suddenly is less dogmatic on this issue. The gag rule on abortion counseling isn’t really an absolute gag, Bush says. Or perhaps it is. It’s just not clear, which is precisely what he intends.

The Administration announced last week that it was modifying its rule governing federally funded family planning clinics to permit doctors--but no one else--to give pregnant patients “complete medical information,” including advice about abortion. But has it done so?

Drafted in 1988, the gag rule prohibits all clinic personnel from uttering the word abortion , barring them even from advising women who ask about this option. The Supreme Court upheld the regulation last term, sparking widespread outrage, including much from the medical profession. The rule is an indefensible limit on speech, and it sanctions a separate, inferior standard of care for the poor.

As the Administration is now poised to actually implement this pernicious rule--in an election year--the President may be worried about political fallout. So last week Bush sought to mollify by saying that doctors can discuss abortion.

But if you want to read that in black and white, you won’t find it. Not in the new guidelines or in a memo first circulated last fall. The language is not there, and according to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service, it’s not clearly implied.

But even if doctors can discuss abortion, only an estimated 5% of all medical personnel in family planning clinics are physicians. The vast majority of patients have little or no contact with physicians; mainly, they are treated by nurses and technicians who remain firmly gagged.

Bush’s latest gambit fools no one. Not physicians, who still solidly oppose the rule and the guidelines. And, significantly, not the National Right to Life Committee, which expressed “strong approval” of the new guidelines. The committee understands that no matter how it’s disguised, a gag rule is still a gag rule.