- Republicans in the US House of Representatives have opened a coordinated campaign to begin imposing new restrictions on abortion, the Washington Post reported in Friday editions. The newspaper said the campaign opened on Thursday as a House panel began work on a proposal making it a federal crime to injure or kill a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman.

The measure, which could come up for a vote before the congressional recess that begins April 9, is widely expected to pass the House despite strong Democratic opposition, the Post said. Both abortion opponents and abortion rights advocates said the bill signaled the beginning of an effort to capitalize on President George W. Bush's election and enact legislation that was blocked for years by President Clinton, the newspaper said. Bush opposes abortion and has already reinstated a ban on US-funded family planning groups advocating abortion rights. Clinton scrapped the ban when he became president in 1993, and Bush revived it just two days after taking office.

The Post said other legislative measures abortion opponents plan to pursue: are a ban on a controversial procedure opponents refer to as "partial birth" abortion, a restriction prohibiting anyone but a parent from transporting a minor across state lines to have an abortion, and limitations on who can administer mifepristone, an abortion pill previously known as RU-486 that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration shortly before Clinton left office. Republicans said they were deliberately choosing measures that they believe would resonate with most voters and avoiding a frontal assault on the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed women's right to abortion, according to the newspaper.