Abortion Advocate Admits Lying

 (15:51 02/26/97) WASHINGTON (Reuter) - A prominent spokesman for the
pro-abortion lobby said Wednesday he ``lied through my teeth'' when he
said controversial late-term abortions were rarely performed and
primarily to save women's lives.

Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of
Abortion Providers, said in an article in the latest American Medical
News and The New York Times that the operation is most often done on
healthy women with healthy fetuses.

Doctors perform the procedure by partly extracting the fetus from the
birth canal and suctioning out its brain.

``It is a form of killing,'' Fitzsimmons said. ``You're ending a
life.''

Fitzsimmons said he lied because he was afraid that telling the truth
would damage the abortions rights cause.

He said after he made statements defending late-term abortions --
after 20 weeks of pregnancy -- on ABC Television's ``Nightline''
program: ``It made me physically ill.''

President Clinton vetoed a bill last April that would have made the
operations illegal, arguing that it was done in only ''a few hundred''
cases and for women who are in danger or whose fetuses have terrible
deformities.

Congress failed to override the veto.

Doug Johnson, the Right To Life Committee's legislative director, said
the problem with Fitzsimmons was that the major media accepted his
assertions and that Clinton used them to decide on his veto.

``These claims were adopted uncritically and disseminated by the major
media,'' he said in reacting to Fitzsimmon's admission that he misled
the public during last year's debate over the late-term abortions.

``The fact of the matter is that most of these abortions occur between
4 * and six months (of pregnancy) and that most are performed on
healthy women and that the abortion lobby knows this,'' he said.

Johnson said that a similar bill to outlaw late-term abortions will be
introduced in the House next week, but even if Congress passes it
Clinton is likely to veto it again.

Despite Fitzsimmon's admission, ``we do expect it to be vetoed
again,'' he said.