Pro-Choice? Get Lost

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 After bumping against White House questioning about their abortion views, several of Sullivan's job nominees have withdrawn their names from consideration.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.

With reporting by Dick Thompson and Nancy Traver/Washington