Republicans made their first attempt of the new presidency yesterday to pass a law restricting abortion rights in the US.
A bill introduced into both houses of Congress is intended to prevent some doctors prescribing the "abortion pill" mifepristone, otherwise known as RU-486, authorised for use in the last months of Bill Clinton's presidency.
The pill, available in 13 other countries, including Britain, induces abortion during the first seven weeks of pregnancy without recourse to surgery.
The licensing of the drug in the US in September 2000 by the food and drug administration has opened a new front in the long argument between supporters and opponents of birth control and abortion and has rapidly become the focus of the anti-abortion movement.
The bill, sponsored by Senator Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas and Representative David Vitter of Louisiana, requires any doctor prescribing the pill to be qualified to handle complications from incomplete abortions and licensed to perform abortions.
Its purpose is explicitly to restrict the prescription of RU-486, which is why the FDA rejected such conditions when the drug was approved last year.
Mr Hutchinson said the only purpose of his bill was "to ensure the health and safety of women who are prescribed RU-486", but Gloria Feldt of the Planned Parenthood Federation accused the bill's backers of "not liking science that contradicts their ideology".
The Hutchinson-Vitter bill will provide a crucial test of the willingness of the new Republican-controlled Congress to make abortion a central issue in the political situation created by the November 2000 election.
While most Republicans are opposed to abortion rights, leaders of the party on both sides of the row recognise that the issue could polarise the electorate, not yet reconciled to Mr Bush's disputed election, and damage the party in the 2002 midterm elections.
If the legislation is passed by Congress there is little doubt that Mr Bush will sign it.
"I think the FDA's decision to approve the abortion pill RU-486 is wrong," Mr Bush said last year.
"I fear that making this abortion pill widespread will make abortions more and more common, rather than more and more rare."
He has since said that he does not have the power to overturn the approval of RU-486 on prescription, but that he would like to investigate whether the approval was conducted appropriately.
The arrival of an avowedly "pro-life" president in the White House has re-energised anti-abortion conservatives.
Although Mr Bush mostly kept quiet about the issue during the campaign, he has already delighted conservatives by reimposing a Reagan-era ban on US international support to organisations offering abortion advice or operations.
At state level, the Republican party remains generally committed to tightening the law on abortion by any means possible. In Virginia this week, the legislature passed a law obliging doctors to offer detailed anti-abortion information, including pictures of foetuses, to women seeking terminations.
Although conservative Republicans want Mr Bush to take the lead in a new campaign against the right to choose, he appears to be adopting a step-by-step approach.
Last month, in a message to anti-abortion groups, he said: "We share a great goal, to work towards a day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law.
"We know this will not come easily or all at once."
