■ newspeak: Reproductive Services Inc. is the name of the Texas outfit that performs 20,000 abortions a year.
■ Thousands of HEW bureaucrats may be late in getting their pay checks this month because the House and Senate conferees have been unable to find a middle ground on Medicare-paid abortions. Approval of that particular clause is holding up congressional passage of a $60.1 billion HEW budget for the fiscal year that started October 1. When the Supreme Court ruled last summer that the Constitution did not require the Federal Government to finance abortions, the House enacted a bill permitting government payment of such abortions only when the mother’s life “is endangered.” The Senate version was much broader, permitting federal funds to be used whenever an abortion was deemed “medically necessary” by a doctor. Usually these differences are ironed out in conference, with one house or the other compromising its stance. But this time the Lower House is holding firm. It is prepared only to widen the language of its bill to permit abortions in cases of rape or incest, and then only before the fact of pregnancy is ascertained. That stand is unacceptable to the Senate, whose liberal leadership favors a program which has meant in practice 200,000 government-financed abortions a year. One reason the House is standing firm is that abortion is now perceived as a critical issue on which a man’s career can be made or broken, and all 435 congressmen are up for re-election next year. Another is that dedicated antiabortionists in the House—among them Congressman Hyde, author of the anti-abortion amendment—consider this an issue on which no compromise is possible.
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