THE QUESTION of abortion, which has split the Republican Party for years, is shaping up to be a divisive policy issue for President Clinton in his campaign for re-election later this year.
The President has fallen foul of the eight Roman Catholic cardinals in the United States, who have written to him criticising his veto of a Bill which would have banned partial birth abortions unless the mother's life was threatened.
The three page letter, co-signed by Bishop Anthony Pilla, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, promises to use the coming weeks and months to inform people that partial birth terminations will continue because President Clinton chose to use his veto.
As well as the political threat implied, the cardinals said they would "urge Catholics and other people of good will" to petition Congress to try to override the veto of the Bill, known as the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.
The measure had bipartisan support in Congress and narrowly passed the Senate. A two thirds vote is needed to override a presidential veto.
While the Republican Party platform outlaws abortion on demand, the Democratic Party supports the woman's right to choose in general terms. Opinion polls show a majority of Americans also support the right to choose. However, only a small minority says it is a deciding factor in a presidential election.
Cardinal Law, the Archbishop of Boston, said at the weekend that partial birth abortion was infanticide, and he hoped that President Clinton's veto of the Bill was not a "cold political calculation". This was a question that the President needs to be asked "Why did you do this?" the cardinal told ABC television.
The Catholic hierarchy in the US is closer to the Democrats than Republicans on social issues such as immigration and health and welfare, but on this issue a wide gap has opened up.
The President "thought very hard about the issue," a White House spokeswoman said last week. "He didn't take this decision lightly."
Partial birth abortions are only performed in life or death situations, according to opponents of the Bill, but supporters claim records show that up to half are performed on healthy women.
The rare abortion procedure involves a doctor extracting a 20 week or older foetus, feet first, then suctioning out its brain to allow the head to pass through the birth canal. The Bill passed by Congress allowed the procedure only to save a woman's life. President Clinton argued that it should be permitted in the case of a pregnancy causing serious health problems to the mother.
Mr Clinton vetoed the Bill on April 10th at a White House ceremony to which he invited five women who had undergone partial birth abortions. They described their ordeals, which they said were forced on them by life threatening health disorders.
The President wrote to Cardinal Hickey, Archbishop of Washington, to explain that he approved of the procedure only if it would save a woman's life or prevent serious risk to her health. "The cases I have in mind," he said are not those where a doctor is convinced that a woman risks death but where the doctor knows that the woman risks grave harm.
The cardinals argue that allowing an exception where a woman risks grave harm would permit late abortions where a woman claimed to be emotionally upset or where her career was threatened by the pregnancy. It would in effect become abortion on demand.
The Health Secretary, Ms Donna Shalala, sought to dispel this idea and appeared to suggest a compromise when interviewed on the same television programme. She explained that "what the President is talking about are cases where the foetus is not viable," and said "We can work out an agreement where the life of a mother and severe health consequences are so narrowly drawn that it's limited to mothers who have no other option."
Cardinal Law told television viewers that he had discussed the procedure with a group of prisoners who were badly shaken. "When I explained to them that this is a mater of applying a scissors into the base of the skull of a child, the skull being the only part of the baby still in the uterus, and then draining out the contents of the brain, and then delivering a dead child, they were horrified."
The Catholic hierarchy's stance has been supported by the Vatican which last Friday censured the Clinton administration.