License to kill? As a senator, John Ashcroft backed a Missouri bill that might make killing an abortion provider justifiable homicide.

By Adele M. Stan
Jan. 18, 2001 The campaign for Sen. John Ashcroft's seat in the U.S. Senate probably began in earnest after the late Mel Carnahan, Missouri's Democratic governor and Ashcroft's would-be opponent, vetoed a controversial bill known as the Infant's Protection Act. Proponents touted the act as a ban on late-term, or so-called "partial-birth," abortions, and from his bully pulpit on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Ashcroft made hay off his rival's veto.
During an October 1999 speech in support of the Partial Birth Abortion Act, which he co-sponsored with Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., Ashcroft said: "Tragically, the Missouri partial birth infanticide bill was vetoed despite its overwhelming passage by the bipartisan Missouri General Assembly." This had followed a previous statement Ashcroft issued in April 1999, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, calling on Carnahan to "sign this important bill." Later, during his failed campaign against the late Carnahan (whose widow, Jean, has taken his Senate seat after he was killed in a fatal air crash in October), Ashcroft launched a radio ad that attacked the governor, saying he had "vetoed a ban on partial-birth abortions."

But what Ashcroft, President-elect Bush's nominee for attorney general, didn't mention was that the Infant's Protection Act allows the use of force against abortion providers -- perhaps even deadly force -- to stop any illegal abortion. Moreover, the bill leaves unclear just what constitutes an illegal abortion.
Even the bill's author, Louis DeFeo of the Missouri Catholic Conference, initially agreed that the bill allowed deadly force against abortion providers, saying, "I think that's justifiable in protecting a person." (The bill effectively defines a fetus as a person.)
As Carnahan put it in his veto statement at the time: "Perhaps most outrageously of all, this bill will allow someone to legally commit acts of violence, including a lethal act against a physician, nurse or patient, in order to prevent a termination of a pregnancy by a procedure which the attacker reasonably believes would be a violation of this bill."
Moreover, Carnahan wrote, the bill was drawn in such a way as to "ban some of the safest and most commonplace first- and second-trimester abortion procedures."
Carnahan's veto was overridden by the Legislature in an effort led by a member of his own party. And Ashcroft immediately began lauding the veto override at Carnahan's expense. "It is an incredible accomplishment," Ashcroft told his fellow senators. "It represents only the seventh veto override in Missouri history, the third override this century, the first override since 1980." (Translation: Ashcroft suffered no overrides during his two terms as Missouri's chief executive.)
A day after the override, Planned Parenthood of Missouri went to a federal court and won an injunction against enforcement of the law, arguing that it criminalized most common abortion procedures. The injunction remains in effect as Planned Parenthood's legal challenge to the law continues.
"Of all of the different versions of these bills, [the Infant's Protection Act] was the most egregious assault on reproductive rights of any of them -- even going so far as giving a defense to those who might engage in violence," says Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). "It was an extraordinary bill. And Ashcroft supported it fully."
Now, as Ashcroft tries to assure his critics that his own partisan political views won't inappropriately influence the job of the nation's top law enforcer, the question emerges: Did Ashcroft, a staunch abortion opponent, condone the potentially extreme ramifications of the bill? Ashcroft, like other Cabinet nominees, is not taking questions from the media, and the Bush transition office did not respond to requests for a comment. Supporters of the bill claim it offers no protection for potential abortion-doctor killers. But opponents dispute that.
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Photograph by AP/Wide World Photos