Abortion Debate

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.

WASHINGTON -- For Republicans on Capitol Hill, the human cloning issue had seemed like a political slam dunk, a way to quickly seize control of a medical development that most Americans say they oppose.But Congress has found itself sandwiched between the conflicting demands of anti-abortion groups opposed to embryonic cloning and a biomedical community fearful that Congress could shut down promising avenues of research. The combatants' entrenched positions might mean that Congress will fail to pass any legislation this year.

THE ADMISSION BY a prominent abortion advocate that he lied about the number of babies killed by "partial-birth abortion" is surprising only in its candor. Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, said he feared the truth would damage the abortion rights cause.Recalling a November 1995 appearance on ABC's "Nightline," Mr. Fitzsimmons said, "I lied through my teeth" when claiming the procedure was rarely used and that only women who sought such abortions were those whose lives were in danger, or whose unborn children were severely damaged.

As early as today, the U.S. Senate will vote on whether to ban "partial-birth" abortions. To do so, it must join the House of Representatives in overriding a veto by President Clinton. But even if the Senate approves the ban, it is unlikely to end abortions performed in the late stages of pregnancy.A congressional ban would end one particular procedure that voices on both sides of the abortion debate agree is the most gruesome and distasteful of all methods used to end pregnancies.In this method, the fetus is usually delivered feet first until all but its head has emerged.

BOSTON -- This is not going away. As one who has watched the quest for common ground in the abortion debate give way time and again to a scorched-earth policy, I can promise you that.Last week the Senate upheld the president's veto of a bill banning what opponents label "partial-birth abortions." But this week, political ads are being readied for the congressional campaigns and the questions honed for the presidential debates.Voters this fall will see drawings of perfect babies coming down birth canals only to be snuffed out by murderous doctors.

IF THE PROCEDURE known as "partial-birth abortion" has turned into a dream-come-true opportunity for opponents of legalized abortion to make inroads among traditional pro-choice advocates, the drug known as RU-486 could represent the movement's nightmare. By providing a non-surgical way to end a pregnancy, the drug, which the Food and Drug Administration has said it will approve soon, removes some of the pro-life movement's best tools for appealing to public opinion.It is easy to find out which hospitals or clinics perform surgical abortions and target them for the public protests that make many women shy away from seeking out these services.

WASHINGTON -- Tens of thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Washington yesterday, as they have each of the last 22 years on the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, to press the government for changes in the law.On this occasion, a principal focus of the march was to support legislation that would outlaw a rarely used late-term form of abortion. Both the Senate and the House have passed versions of such a bill, but President Clinton has said he will veto it.Both sides in the abortion debate see the legislation as important, as it is the first time since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 that Congress has voted to ban any method of abortion.

With the Republican Party poised to reaffirm its position that abortion should be banned, an abortion-rights institute is to release a study today revealing that thousands of women who have had the procedure are affiliated with religions that crusade against abortion.The study of nearly 10,000 women nationwide who had abortions in 1994 and early 1995 found that despite the Roman Catholic Church's strong opposition to abortion, 31.3 percent of the abortion patients surveyed were Catholic. And 18.1 percent of the 10,000 patients identified themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians.

JUST WHEN tort reform, assault weapons and budget battles seem to be dominating the news, along comes a court ruling and a jury's acquittal to stir up the waters on an issue few politicians can be happy to face.The right-to-die argument has all the passion of the abortion debate and even more complexity.An abortion is an abortion, but the right to die can refer to assisted or unassisted suicide. The more controversial option, assisted suicide, can come in either a passive form by removing life support, or actively, with the injection of drugs hastening death.

WITH RECENT DECISIONS from two federal appeals courts overturning state bans on physician-assisted suicide, the Supreme Court soon may be grappling with this issue. In our view, the country does not need a sweeping decision either legalizing or banning the practice. Rather, we hope the high court will recognize that the public needs time and encouragement to settle this issue through the political process.That process is already well under way, with vigorous debates taking place in many legislatures across the country.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.