Political Victories Lead to New Battles for Advocates of Abortion Rights : Laws: Interpreting the right to choose has created divisions in the ranks. The debate is forcing members of Congress to make difficult decisions.

WASHINGTON — Having fought so hard to elect a President who would ensure that abortion would remain a right for American women, abortion rights advocates now seeking to write their political gains into law are discovering deep divisions within their ranks.

While they presented a solid front against those who would overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion rights case, they disagree among themselves on how broad a right the Supreme Court’s ruling in that case actually provides.

President Clinton reopened an old conflict last week, when he announced that he was following through on his campaign pledge to overturn the 16-year-old ban on federal funding for abortions. While many lawmakers say they support the idea that abortion should be available, they do not believe that American taxpayers should be forced to pay for it, particularly when so many have moral and religious objections to terminating a pregnancy.

And that is only one of the areas in which the evolving debate over abortion is tapping the ambiguities that underlie the issue itself.

Over the next few months, Congress will also consider whether parents should be consulted when their minor daughter seeks an abortion, whether women have a right to abortion in the later stages of a pregnancy, whether it is reasonable to require counseling and waiting periods before women have abortions and whether certain types of anti-abortion protests should be a federal crime.

When Americans consider these questions, opinion polls show, public support for unrestricted abortion rights begins to break down. Thus, they are proving difficult, even for lawmakers who say they support the Roe vs. Wade ruling establishing abortion as a right.

Perhaps the thorniest debate will come over the question of whether the procedure--which abortion rights advocates contend is a basic component of women’s health care--should be included in the benefits package that is being developed as part of Clinton’s massive effort to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Even some abortion rights advocates acknowledge that delving into this explosive issue could doom the entire health plan, which already is certain to encounter strong opposition from an array of powerful interest groups.

“We had always hoped that poor women (seeking abortions) would be taken care of in the health bill, but I don’t know if that will happen. Right now, we don’t have the votes,” said Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), a supporter of abortion rights who chairs the House Judiciary subcommittee with jurisdiction over the issue.

Abortion rights advocates say that unless they are able to prevail on the most politically difficult questions, the gains they made from Roe vs. Wade will be meaningless. “The majority of people in the country and in Congress agree that there is a right to choose” abortion, said Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League. “But there is no right if one cannot exercise it.”

But anti-abortion groups counter that their opponents are simply trying to obscure ugly choices in lofty rhetoric. “NARAL wants this to be a vote on the label ‘Are you for choice or not?’ ” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, the nation’s largest anti-abortion organization.

Many of these issues will get their first test in the proposed Freedom of Choice Act, which has been approved by the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee and is expected to clear the House Judiciary Committee this month.

Backers say the measure merely puts the Roe vs. Wade ruling into law as it was interpreted by the courts through 1988, before its first major narrowing by the Supreme Court.

However, both sides agree that it would overturn some politically popular state laws that have been upheld by the courts since then, such as Pennsylvania’s requirement for a 24-hour waiting period.

Although Michelman conceded that waiting periods have broad political appeal, she said they make abortion particularly difficult--prohibitively so, in some cases--for poor women, who often must travel great distances to obtain the procedure.

“It is wrong to treat this right differently from other rights--to burden it, make it difficult and to humiliate women in the process,” she said.

The measure would also strike down some states’ requirements that women considering abortion be counseled on fetal development and other issues that, in practice, might make them more reluctant to go through with the procedure. Edwards said those provisions amount to “harassment of the worst kind for a woman, and humiliation,” but they enjoy broad popular support.

Under pressure from abortion rights supporters, Edwards’ subcommittee deleted a provision from the bill that would have made it clear that states could continue to impose certain parental notification requirements. However, he said he fears that action could cost the votes of many who might otherwise support the legislation.

Abortion rights advocates “think that now is the time to get rid of parental involvement,” he said. “I wish they would be satisfied with codifying Roe vs. Wade. All the polls indicate the moment you get into weakening parental involvement, you lose. You lose big.”

Meanwhile, abortion opponents hope to add explicit restrictions on abortions after the point where a fetus becomes viable--a decision that the legislation’s backers say they would leave up to individual states.

Johnson noted that some polls show that almost three-quarters of the public believes that abortion should be illegal after the third month of pregnancy, and many think that this is already the case. Thus, it would appear that a provision sharply limiting abortion in the second and third trimester has a good chance of prevailing.

“What we have to worry about are these people not being able to amend the Freedom of Choice Act to where we end up with no right at all,” Michelman said. “We’re having to take on the elements of the right to choose in a more direct way. What I have to help members (of Congress) understand is they are all about the right to choose.”

In the wake of last month’s slaying of a Florida doctor by an anti-abortion activist, the House Judiciary Committee is considering a bill that would make it a federal crime to obstruct the entrance of an abortion clinic. Senate legislation introduced by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) would go further, imposing fines and jail terms on those who use threats and intimidation.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has said that a new law is necessary because existing federal statutes are inadequate to protect abortion doctors and their patients. She urged Congress to extend the bill to cover activities that occur away from clinics as well.

However, many in Congress say they are concerned that the legislation could be used against legitimate political protest, despite its explicit declaration that peaceful expression of abortion opposition would remain legal.

“The civil rights movement would not have achieved what it achieved without peaceful protest and picketing, and, yes, obstruction” of public facilities, said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, an abortion foe who is the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary subcommittee that approved the legislation.

These arguments clearly have taken hold with some in Congress. Rep. David Mann (R-Ohio), a first-term congressman, voted against the bill, although he noted that he supports the Roe vs. Wade ruling.

Rep. Craig Washington (D-Tex.), a black congressman who said he owed his election to the civil rights struggle, supported the measure in the subcommittee but said it was “a hard, hard decision.”

Schumer, acknowledging that Congress now finds itself in the difficult position of balancing different sets of individual rights, said: “Anyone on either side who’s on a moral high horse hasn’t really thought the issue through. . . . These are difficult questions.”