NEWS
By Annie Linskey | November 2, 2009
A Baltimore City Council panel is set to take a key vote today on controversial legislation that would require pregnancy clinics that don't perform abortions or distribute birth control to post signs stating just that. The legislation would affect four clinics in Baltimore. It has drawn attention from people on both sides of the abortion debate who think the city council bill could become a model for legislation in other cities and towns across the county. City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake introduced the measure after meeting with abortion rights advocacy groups.
NEWS
By CLARENCE PAGE | January 29, 2008
If legalized abortion led to the drastic 1990s decline in crime, as some people think, will a decline in abortion lead to a crime surge? That question came to mind as activists last week marked the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Although the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" groups don't agree on much, both found something to celebrate in the big news of the day: U.S. abortion rates have fallen to a 30-year low. The New York-based Guttmacher Institute, whose research is cited by both sides in the superheated abortion debate, reported that abortions fell to 1.2 million in 2005 from a peak of 1.6 million in 1990.
NEWS
By Stephanie Simon | April 12, 2007
The most intense battleground in the abortion debate these days revolves around a simple question: What do women need to know before they terminate a pregnancy? South Dakota lawmakers want to compel doctors - under penalty of a month in jail - to tell women that the abortion they seek will kill a "whole, separate, unique, living human being." South Carolina is on the verge of requiring women to review ultrasound images of their fetus with a physician before consenting to end the pregnancy.
NEWS
By Mary Meehan | January 22, 2007
Here we are again at the anniversary of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion. While the March for Life legions rally in the cold to protest that decision, NARAL Pro-Choice America and other groups celebrate a "woman's right to choose." Catherine Callaghan, co-founder of Feminists for Life of America, taught linguistics at Ohio State University. She once remarked: "Choose is a transitive verb; it requires an object. Finish the sentence - choose what?" Ah, but the main point of saying "right to choose" and "pro-choice" and "the choice issue" is to avoid the word abortion.
NEWS
By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG | November 15, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in 1985 that he "very strongly" believed the Constitution "does not protect a right to an abortion," and he said he was proud of his work as a lawyer in the Reagan administration arguing against the position enshrined in the landmark decision Roe v. Wade. Alito made the comments in an application for a job as deputy assistant attorney general, when asked about his "philosophical commitment" to Reagan administration policies.
NEWS
By Steve Chapman | August 8, 2005
CHICAGO - When T. S. Eliot wrote that "humankind cannot bear very much reality," he could have been talking about the abortion debate. As abortion rights advocates try to make their case against the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court, they have abandoned fact-checking in favor of mythmaking. The myths in this case are two. The first is that Judge Roberts is a frothing extremist on the subject of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision creating a constitutional right to abortion.
NEWS
By Ellen Goodman | November 13, 2003
BOSTON - Maybe this picture isn't worth a thousand words. That honor probably belongs to the flight deck portrait of President Bush under the sign "Mission Accomplished." Maybe the presidential photo op now flying around the Internet and soon to be available on your local T-shirt is only worth 750 words. The picture shows the president surrounded by an all-male chorus line of legislators as he signs the first ban on an abortion procedure. It's a single-sex class photo of men making laws governing something they will never have: a womb.
NEWS
By Ellen Goodman | October 27, 2003
BOSTON - This is a tale of two signatures, each bearing the Bush penmanship. It's a tale of two bills that allow legislatures to trump a family, a doctor, a patient, a court. And it's a tale of what it means, when push comes to shove, to lose the right to make complicated decisions about life and death. The first of these signatures, Gov. Jeb Bush's, is on a law rushed through the Florida House and Senate with all the speed and none of the expertise of a trauma team in an emergency room.
NEWS
By Tim Craig | March 7, 2003
An old fight resurfaced yesterday in Annapolis as opposing sides of the abortion debate squared off on a proposal to toughen the state's parental notification law for minors. The bill by Del. Carmen Amedori, a Carroll County Republican, would change current law so that only a judge - not a doctor, as is now allowed - could permit girls to bypass the state's parental notification requirement. "If my kid goes in for oral surgery, I have to be notified," Amedori said as she prepared to testify before the House Health and Government Operations committee hearing on the bill.
NEWS
By Susan Baer | February 1, 2001
WASHINGTON - In President Bush's first week in office, he plunged into the politically turbulent abortion debate from several angles, questioning and, in one case, reversing Clinton-era initiatives that had been the law for the past eight years. But Bush's statements and actions have not only raised the ire of the abortion rights community, which expected his opposition to its cause. They have also sent alarm bells ringing through scientific research and patients groups that fear Bush may curtail federally funded research that uses fetal tissue or stem cells from embryos and aborted fetuses.