House lifts ban on D.C. abortion funding

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By Joseph Weber

The House passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill Thursday that gives the District of Columbia more control over such local issues as funding abortions and legalizing medical marijuana.

The legislation, which passed 221-202, also would overturn a ban on local funding for D.C. needle-exchange programs and phase out the city's federally-funded school-vouchers program. The legislation also would lift a nationwide ban on the use of federal funds for needle exchange.

The Senate is expected to pass the legislation, with a vote as early as Saturday.

The District's non-voting House member Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, said the vote was a "historic step to ensure greater democracy in the nation's capital."

"We will never make up for the HIV/AIDS epidemic that besieged this city because needle exchange was banned for a decade or make up for the loss of lives," Mrs. Norton said. "There is no way to make poor women, forced to carry pregnancies to term, believe that their reproductive choice was guaranteed in the decades when there was a ban on using local funds for abortion for poor women."

The legislation now before the Democratic-controlled Congress would allow the city to decide whether to implement a referendum to permit the use of medical marijuana.

In 1998, city residents voted in favor of legalizing medical marijuana. But the initiative was blocked by a rider sponsored by Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican who is no longer in Congress. The legislation passed Thursday would lift the so-called Barr Amendment.

D.C. lawmakers said before the vote they would proceed cautiously if the ban is lifted.

Congress oversees much of the District's government and approves its budget. District residents have long pushed for more autonomy -- or "home rule" -- including having a House member with full voting privileges.

The effort to give D.C. a full House member came close to passing last year when lawmakers proposed also giving Utah another House member, which would likely be a Republican. However, the effort failed because opponents said such a change would require a constitutional amendment.