Partial-birth abortion is the procedure that has been called "one-fifth abortion, four-fifths infanticide." It is unrecognized in the medical literature, positively dangerous to womens' health and fertility and opposed by those most expert in crisis pregnancy.

On Friday morning the U.S. Senate once again failed, by the margin of three votes, to muster the two-thirds, or 67 votes, necessary to override the Clinton veto of a bill banning this gruesome practice. Readers will recall that one year ago this week the Missouri Senate failed, by one vote, to override the governor's veto of a similar bill. This after no fewer than eight of my colleagues who had voted for my bill in the spring switched their votes under gubernatorial pressure and voted to sustain the veto.

So thanks to President Clinton and Gov. Mel Carnahan, America and Missouri are once again safe for our abortionists to partially deliver a full-term baby, all but the head, then to insert scissors into the base of the skull and to insert a suction tube to suck the brains out.

Having been the sponsor of Missouri's bill, naturally I was discouraged when, despite our best efforts, we failed to override the Carnahan veto. But as I said at the time, and repeat here now, "Many more such victories, and the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton and Mel Carnahan will be undone." The Lord who inspires our efforts doesn't demand that we win every battle; merely that we give Him our best, trusting not in our understanding, but in His.

In that spirit we tried to pass the ban and will again. In America, however, it is you the voter who is sovereign. More than one Missouri legislator will have to answer for betraying his previous position.

In the now-it-can-be-told department, you should know what transpired in the hours immediately preceding our override attempt last September. Drama built that morning, as it had for weeks before last year's session. We quit for lunch, and I walked from the Senate chamber to my fourth floor Capitol office. I was handed an urgent message to call a senior Democratic senator ASAP. He asked, "Will you come to my office right away?" I did so, and this senator told me that they had the votes to defeat the override motion that I would make upon our return, and would I meet with the governor right away to discuss a way out for all involved? I said of course. With a wink and a nod, this senator told me that if I played my cards right, the governor would still award the coveted $75 million prison to Charleston, in the district I represent. He was among many Democrats who had earlier told me that if I moved to override, Charleston had no chance.

Moments later I was in the inner sanctum of the governor's second-floor office, across a table from Gov. Carnahan and two aides. He asked me to stand up at a press conference later that afternoon, after my motion had been defeated, and announce that I would join him in passing a bill with a health exception. I responded that I would consider it a while, after conferring with advisers. Later that afternoon, responding to urgent requests from the governor's chief of staff Brad Ketcher, I refused. My refusal to help solve a problem Mel Carnahan had created for his own party ignited a gubernatorial temper tantrum, expressed in an extraordinarily testy letter dated Sept. 17, 1997, which he sent me and released to the press.

In November, Charleston and another southern Missouri town were awarded prisons anyway. The process by which those decisions were made is now the subject of a grand jury investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.