Abortion Controversy

WASHINGTON -- A divided Supreme Court ruled yesterday that anti-abortion demonstrators have the right to confront patients, doctors and clinic staff members face to face but must back off as soon as they are asked to do so.The decision provided new guidance to judges who handle disputes arising from clinic blockades. It also gave each side in the abortion controversy something to cite as a partial victory.By an 8-1 vote, the court struck down a "floating bubble zone" that a federal judge had created to protect people at clinics in western New York that have been the site of blockades and physically rough encounters.

WASHINGTON -- Announcing her gubernatorial candidacy Wednesday, Rep. Helen Delich Bentley told a Baltimore news conference that she would vote for legislation to establish a nationwide waiting period for handgun purchases.But later in the day she voted against the bill, according to the official record.Mrs. Bentley, whose campaign will include an emphasis on combating crime, says that she actually voted for the Brady bill, which requires a five-day waiting period to purchase a handgun. She insists that the electronic system that tallies the votes of House members malfunctioned in reporting her vote -- something that observers of House affairs say they have never heard of."

Boston.--All through the debate about abortion and health care reform, many members of Congress have been talking about the status quo as if it were a peaceable kingdom in the abortion wars.They have described that ''state'' longingly as a utopia where sleeping dogs lie. Where boats don't rock. Where bills pass.Leaders in both houses have tried to devise some compromise that would fit within those borders. They wanted a place where a reform bill would be safe from the cross fire of pro-life and pro-choice opponents.

Washington. -- Florida -- a place where the right to abortion is strong and secure -- is nevertheless emerging as this year's most significant legal battleground in that bitter conflict. That is both a coincidence and an irony, but its importance lies in the symbolic and real meaning it has for the nation as a whole.What is happening to the law of abortion in Florida is true for America: A shift is occurring, away from the fight over abortion rights as a constitutional question toward a more complex controversy over what can or cannot occur, legally, outside the clinics when abortion foes jam the sidewalks and try to close down operations.

Maryland's election results, in a variety of contests in which abortion was the dominant issue, have an ironic twist to them. They are a reminder of this seemingly topsy-turvy notion: The better that abortion rights forces do at the polls, the less likely it nTC that abortion rights will continue to fare well in the courts.Abortion rights forces did not sweep all of their adversaries out of office in Maryland last week, but they came remarkably close. At the very least, they demonstrated that they can use that issue to devastating effect politically -- especially in state legislative races.

Paris -- The unification of Europe has come to an awkward pause as a direct result of the agreement meant to accelerate it. The Treaty of Maastricht, agreed at the last summit meeting of the European governments in December, now awaits ratification the public or parliaments in the member-states of the European Community. Several are balking.The treaty includes provisions limiting the sovereignty of the Community states. The most dramatic is creation of an independent European Central Bank, with a common currency for Europe, the ''ecu,'' an English acronym for ''European currency unit.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, in the most significant legal victory for abortion clinics since the protest wars on their sidewalks reached a violent pitch, ruled unanimously yesterday that the clinics may use one of the toughest anti-crime laws on the books -- the anti-racketeering law -- in suits against blockaders.The court took only seven weeks to make up its mind on an issue that has been controversial in lower courts for more than seven years. Federal judges were split on whether clinics could use the 1970 law, which allows tripled damages as a remedy for a pattern of criminal acts.

WASHINGTON -- "The Supreme Court," according to Finley Peter Dunne's fictional Mr. Dooley, "follows the election returns." In the case of the abortion decision, the court seems to have reflected the public opinion polls four months before the presidential election.The result is anger at both extremes of opinion on abortion rights -- and the prospect the issue will become a significant, perhaps even a determinative, factor in the campaign for the presidency.At the very least, the decision will energize the abortion rights activists enough to give the issue a prominence President Bush and his strategists would like to avoid because they fear Mr. Bush's adamant opposition will cost him heavily among Republican and independent women.

WASHINGTON -- A volatile mix of religion and politics is engulfing the national debate over who can marry, further shrinking the chances of agreement on that divisive issue. Just as religious views on when life begins deepened the cultural war over abortion, the perception of marriage as a creation of God, reserved for a man and a woman, is deepening the conflict over the desire of homosexuals to gain the right to marry. On one side of that divide, the view is that marriage was made in heaven and that its core meaning cannot change without defying God's law. On the other side, the notion is that marriage is a creation of the law and must evolve, as law always does, to accommodate social changes.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court reopened the entire abortion controversy yesterday, agreeing to rule before summer on a major new test of its historic decision in Roe vs. Wade.Although the court deliberately shied away from promising to decide whether to overrule the Roe decision, its coming ruling in a Pennsylvania case is expected to go far toward settling the fate of abortion rights as a practical matter.The kind of final decision that is now widely expected in that case -- narrowing the right so that abortions are allowed only in the rarest emergency situations -- would shift much of the heated controversy to the political arena, to Congress and to state legislatures.