Abortion Foes

Here's a hint for those who choose to make a public show of their compassion for the unborn: It undercuts your argument when you characterize as "intellectually dishonest child-killers" the majority of your fellow citizens who disagree with you on the faith-based issue of when "personhood" begins. Gordon Livingston Columbia

Here's a hint for those who choose to make a public show of their compassion for the unborn: It undercuts your argument when you characterize as "intellectually dishonest child-killers" the majority of your fellow citizens who disagree with you on the faith-based issue of when "personhood" begins. Gordon Livingston Columbia

U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles last Tuesday granted a request for a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks a provision in North Carolina's new abortion-restriction law that would require women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image of their womb within four hours of the procedure. In her decision to suspend this one requirement, while upholding other provisions in the law pending resolution of the lawsuit by several plaintiffs, Judge Eagles said the ultrasound requirement likely violates patients' First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles last Tuesday granted a request for a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks a provision in North Carolina's new abortion-restriction law that would require women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image of their womb within four hours of the procedure. In her decision to suspend this one requirement, while upholding other provisions in the law pending resolution of the lawsuit by several plaintiffs, Judge Eagles said the ultrasound requirement likely violates patients' First Amendment rights.

DES MOINES -- Perhaps Texas Gov. George W. Bush's most touchy moment in the Republican presidential debate here the other night came when former Reagan administration official Gary Bauer asked him a simple question: Would he pledge, if nominated, to select an anti-abortion running mate?It was a clear litmus test of the anti-abortion front-runner in a state where abortion foes are said to hold strong influence in the Republican Party, and whose support is being zealously sought -- particularly by Mr. Bauer.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's decision to ask Congress to ditch the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding of abortions, is the latest blow to abortion foes who have seen their political clout steadily eroded by a combination of election results and public sentiment.In 1989, when the Supreme Court in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services ruled by 5-4 that states could impose limitations on abortion rights affirmed in 1973 in Roe vs. Wade, the anti-abortion forces thought the tide had turned for them.

WASHINGTON -- For years, the abortion fight has been waged with in-your-face protests in front of abortion clinics and with graphic pictures of bloody fetuses.Now, abortion foes are increasingly relying on a quieter strategy of carefully targeted political pressure. The goal isn't to fundamentally change abortion policy; it is to make gradual, but steady headway -- or make adversaries pay a price if they don't go along.Judging by the past week's events, the approach is working.Abortion opponents in Congress wanted to bar aid to international family-planning groups that promote, perform or support abortion with their own money.

WASHINGTON -- Abortion doctors, saying they now fear for their lives as targets of militant foes of abortion, joined with clinics yesterday to open a new front in a nationwide legal war.A lawsuit filed in Portland, Ore., seeking a minimum of $200 million in damages to be paid to doctors and clinics nationwide, is the second major legal assault taken to federal courts in recent years and is a sign of an escalation of courtroom battles against anti-abortion forces.Earlier...

WASHINGTON -- Though weary from a long night of watching the abortion issue get pulled this way and that in the election returns, both sides started to gear up yesterday for the next round of fights -- probably starting in Michigan and Ohio -- over new laws against abortion.Those two big states were singled out by abortion foes as the first places to test in state legislatures the political gains they claimed in the Tuesday results.In Ohio and Michigan, the aim of anti-abortion forces will be the same as it has been in recent years: get the legislatures to pass tough new restrictions on abortion and to set up new tests in court of theirauthority to curb the right to end a pregnancy.

WASHINGTON - Returning to the field of conflict outside abortion clinics, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to spell out judges' power to keep protesters at a distance from pregnant women.Less than two years after laying down ground rules on limiting clinic blockades, the justices selected a new case from upstate New York to focus on the constitutionality of buffer zones that surround women and clinic staff members and remain with them as they enter and leave the vicinity of an abortion center.

FREDERICK -- Diners at Ruby Tuesday were greeted this week by a grisly sight: the enormous image of the mangled half-formed skull of an aborted fetus. Blown up large, bigger than an adult, the graphic "photo" was one of more than a dozen signs held up on the sidewalk along U.S. 40. The scene -- repeated across the region from Towson to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington -- is part of Defend Life's weeklong "Face the Truth Tour," a multistop, anti-abortion rally that aims to shock Maryland voters into changing their views on the procedure.

STURGIS, S.D. -- Volunteers pushing to overturn the nation's most far-reaching abortion ban are surprised and delighted by the response as they circulate petitions to put the law up for a public vote. Even in the most conservative corners of this conservative state, Republicans and Democrats - including some voters who say they oppose abortion - are eagerly signing the petition. In two weeks, volunteers have collected a third of the signatures they need to get a November referendum on the ban. Some voters dismiss the abortion rights activists as out of touch with South Dakotan values.

For the first time in a long time, conservatives planning to converge on Annapolis for a yearly anti-abortion rally feel as if they're riding momentum's tide into town. With two new possible allies on the Supreme Court and a host of mobilizing issues before state lawmakers, abortion opponents say the balance -- even in the Democratic stronghold of Maryland -- might be shifting their way. Organizers are expecting a heavy turnout for tomorrow's March for Life, which they have optimistically themed "Maryland without Roe."

ARLINGTON, VA. -- Is now the time for pro-lifers to go for it all, to swing for the fences and try to overturn Roe v. Wade? Or is a gradual approach the better way to restore legal protection for the unborn? Last week, the South Dakota legislature swung for the fences by passing a bill that would again criminalize abortion except to save a woman's life. There are no other exceptions, including rape and incest. Republican Gov. Michael Rounds has indicated his inclination to sign the bill.

`ROE VS. WADE is the settled law of the land. ... There's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani received a standing ovation at Loyola College's graduation yesterday, dismissing with a quip the flap over his invitation by the Roman Catholic school even though he supports abortion rights. "I realize there might have been a little controversy [about] me coming. I can't help it, I'm a Yankees fan," Giuliani said as the crowd of nearly 1,600 graduates and their families laughed. About the same time he was speaking at the Loyola commencement, House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi urged Goucher College graduates to make a difference in the world.

WASHINGTON -- In a surprising reversal, abortion foes in the House of Representatives voted yesterday to override President Clinton's veto of a bill that would outlaw a late-term abortion procedure denounced by its critics as infanticide.In a 285-137 vote, House lawmakers rejected arguments that the ban would deny women who are experiencing crises pregnancies access to a procedure that could protect their health and future fertility. Opponents said the procedure is grotesque and brings a painful end to a life.

An abortion-rights bill that is moving rapidly through the General Assembly is expected to be approved today by the House of Delegates.The bill would guarantee Maryland women the same rights to have abortions they now have under the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision even if the high court later modified that ruling.Although abortion foes consider the bill too liberal, abortion-rights supporters say it is a compromise because it contains a provision that, in some cases, would require a parent or guardian of a girl under age 18 to be notified before she can obtain an abortion.

BOSTON - Emergency contraception is the no-brainer in the abortion controversy. If taken soon enough, it can prevent 80 percent of unwanted pregnancies. Anyone looking to reduce the number of abortions should agree on reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies. There is still no peep from the Food and Drug Administration on putting Plan B, the after-the-act contraceptive, on the drugstore shelf. Still no Plan C, if C stands for the ever-elusive common ground. It's no secret that there's a solid anti-abortion majority in the Congress.

BOSTON - Have you been listening to all the Democrats talking about real estate? Despite a campaign that hinged on foreign policy and a candidate who couldn't speak straight, many have decided that the culprit is abortion. And they've gone out shopping for "common ground." In his state of the (liberal) union address, pro-choice stalwart Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said, "Surely we can all agree that abortion should be rare and that we should do all we can to help women avoid the need to face that decision."