Abortion Opponents

Denise Crowe dropped her toddler off with a sitter in February 2006 and drove with a friend to an Anne Arundel County clinic to get an abortion. It cost about $800. "She thought that she'd just have it done and nobody would know," said Stephanie White, her mother. White told lawmakers Wednesday that her daughter walked into a clinic run by a man who had been the subject of complaints. The day of the procedure, White said, an unqualified staff member pumped her daughter full of drugs.

Denise Crowe dropped her toddler off with a sitter in February 2006 and drove with a friend to an Anne Arundel County clinic to get an abortion. It cost about $800. "She thought that she'd just have it done and nobody would know," said Stephanie White, her mother. White told lawmakers Wednesday that her daughter walked into a clinic run by a man who had been the subject of complaints. The day of the procedure, White said, an unqualified staff member pumped her daughter full of drugs.

WASHINGTON - Galvanized by the Republican takeover of the Senate, opponents of abortion are preparing a major push for new abortion restrictions in the next Congress, beginning with a ban on the type of medical procedure they call "partial-birth abortion." Abortion opponents say they will also push for several other measures already passed by the Republican-controlled House, including a bill making it a crime to evade parental notification laws by taking a minor across state lines for an abortion, and legislation making it a separate crime to harm a fetus during an attack on a pregnant woman.

Nearly two decades ago, members of the Maryland General Assembly approved a law clarifying a woman's right to an abortion. It permits late-term abortions to save the life or health of the mother or when the fetus is seriously abnormal or deformed. This action was not taken lightly — or without considerable debate and public scrutiny. Lawmakers were concerned that this basic right to choose might be denied women if the Supreme Court ever overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

YOUR NOV. 19 editorial, ''Fetus versus mother,'' sounds like you are blaming ''abortion opponents'' for Kawana Ashley's desperate act of shooting herself in the abdomen to end six-month pregnancy (and her daughter's life).According to your editorial, instead of denying women access to abortion, abortion opponents should be doing more ''to prevent pregnancies women cannot responsibly carry to term."While it's true opponents of abortion typically don't push birth control to teen-agers, they do stand ready to provide practical help and support to girls like Kawana.

There is an important distinction between the freedom to express a deeply held belief and intimidation and violence that impinges on the rights of others. When it comes to women's health clinics where abortions are performed, that line is routinely crossed. This week, Congress has the opportunity to uphold law and order by approving legislation to protect clinics and women seeking their services from abortion opponents who frequently turn to violence to make their point.Since 1977, there have been more than 1,000 reported acts of violence directed at facilities that provide abortion and at the people who work there.

Abortion opponents appealed to Gov.-elect Parris N. Glendening yesterday to abandon his campaign promise to lift current restrictions on state-funded abortions for poor women.A coalition of anti-abortion groups released the results of a new public opinion poll showing that most Marylanders want the restrictions on abortions financed under the Medicaid program left in place or even tightened.The abortion opponents claimed that the November election produced anti-abortion majorities in both houses of the General Assembly, and they predicted that Mr. Glendening is setting himself up for a political embarrassment if he tries to implement his promise.

The second shooting of an abortion doctor this year suggests a growing extremism in an anti-abortion movement that feels increasingly frustrated by the political process, some leaders on both sides of the issue said yesterday.Rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected by the White House and shunned by many state legislatures, some abortion opponents feel so frustrated by political obstacles that more violence is likely, they say.While major anti-abortion groups reject illegal activity, violent episodes continue.

It used to be, in the abortion debate, that abortion opponents centered their argument on the rights of the unborn.But in Maryland this year, anti-abortion campaigners have chosen a theme the other side thought it owned: the rights of women.A new abortion law up for refer endum in November would restrict women's rights, not protect them, say the leaders of the Vote kNOw Coalition, which is working to defeat the statute at the polls."I come from a feminist perspective," says Frederica Mathewes-Green, a Vote kNOw spokeswoman.

ANNAPOLIS -- The League of Women Voters yesterday joined the debate over the wording of the abortion question on the November ballot -- charging that rewriting the language, as urged by abortion opponents, could "confuse the voter about the intent and the impact of the law.""The ballot is clearly not the place for a biased presentation reflecting one view or another," said Patty Pollard, president of the League of Women Voters of Maryland.The league, squarely behind the new abortion-rights law, is a member of the leadership council of Maryland for Choice.

Crisis pregnancy centers in Baltimore must display signs stating they do not provide abortions or birth-control referrals under a measure approved by the City Council Monday night and thought to be the first of its kind in the nation. Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat who was lead sponsor of the initiative, called the measure a victory for women's well-being. She cited a study by an advocacy group indicating that women have been misled at pregnancy centers that provide counseling, clothing and food for expectant mothers - but not abortions.

Crisis pregnancy centers in Baltimore must display signs stating they do not provide abortions or birth-control referrals under a measure approved by the City Council Monday night and thought to be the first of its kind in the nation. Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat who was lead sponsor of the initiative, called the measure a victory for women's well-being. She cited a study by an advocacy group indicating that women have been misled at pregnancy centers that provide counseling, clothing and food for expectant mothers - but not abortions.

WASHINGTON -- Henry J. Hyde, the veteran Republican from the suburbs of Chicago who was a key figure in the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton and wrote a controversial law ending federal financing for abortions, died yesterday at a hospital in Chicago. He was 83. Mr. Hyde, who retired from Congress at the end of the 2006 session, died at Rush University Medical Center. A hospital spokeswoman told the Associated Press he was admitted for persistent renal failure after open-heart surgery in July and suffered a fatal arrhythmia.

A shift in strategy of abortion opponents was critical: Exploit the perceived barbarity of the partial-birth abortion procedure and direct efforts to outlaw it. President Bush, though a disappointment to many conservatives, contributed to the fight by appointing John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. And last week, the two justices did their part by helping swing the court toward a major restriction of abortion rights, a 5-4 decision that upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and extended the court's jurisdiction to "the life of the unborn."

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators studying whether the abortion pill RU-486 was responsible for the deaths of two women who took the drug ruled out one of the cases yesterday. The Food and Drug Administration did not indicate which of the deaths had been ruled out. Cindy Summers, a spokeswoman for RU-486 manufacturer Danco Laboratories, said it was a death that took place several weeks after the abortion. The FDA is continuing to investigate the cause of the other death, which came several days after RU-486 was administered.

PIERRE, S.D. --Lawmakers here are preparing to vote on a bill that would outlaw nearly all abortions in South Dakota, a measure that could become the most sweeping ban approved by any state in more than a decade, those on both sides of the abortion debate say. If the bill passes a narrowly divided Senate in a vote expected today, and is signed by Gov. Michael Rounds, a Republican who opposes abortion, advocates of abortion rights have pledged to challenge...

Abortion opponents, fresh from a loss in the Maryland legislature, are making battle plans for a long predicted fight on a new front: a campaign to overturn the state's new abortion-rights law at referendum in November 1992."

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 -- The Supreme Court set the stage yesterday for a major ruling on abortion by agreeing to decide whether Congress can outlaw so-called partial-birth abortions during the mid-term of a pregnancy. The fate of the federal law, the first nationwide ban on an abortion procedure, probably depends on President Bush's two new appointees: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito. The court has been closely split on how strictly the government may regulate abortion, with former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor usually casting a deciding vote.

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of thousands of abortion rights supporters marched through downtown yesterday then filled the National Mall in a daylong rally intended to draw attention to what they describe as a Bush administration assault on reproductive freedoms. The marchers - forming a sea of bright pink T-shirts, pompoms and political signs - poured through the nation's capital to raise awareness of what they see as an erosion of abortion rights by way of legal challenges and legislative defeats.