Abortion Opponents

Both sides in the bitter abortion debate, which has played out in Pennsylvania as intensely as anywhere, have been using taxpayer money to advance their causes.On one side, an abortion-rights legislator -- Democratic Rep. Karen Ritter -- has distributed $500,000 from the state's general fund to provide family-planning services, including birth control, around the state -- services that the state legislature expressly voted not to provide.Anti-abortion forces find this outrageous."We object to our tax dollars being funneled into organizations like Planned Parenthood that are in the forefront of the abortion-rights movement," said Mary Beliveau, legislative coordinator of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation.

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.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court gave judges across the nation clear but limited authority yesterday to keep abortion clinics open and functioning when they are targeted by anti-abortion blockades.That power, however, may be used only to stop those who have tried to close clinics before or who pose a distinct threat to do so, the court majority made clear in the 6-3 ruling.The mere prospect that protesters might show up outside a clinic is not enough to justify court-ordered protection for clinics by limiting protesters' free-speech rights in advance, the court indicated.

WASHINGTON -- For years, abortion rights advocates framed the debate on whether women or the government should be able decide to terminate pregnancies. Now abortion opponents are trying to shift attention to whether the procedure is so vile that it should not be done at all.Because the Supreme Court has said the legislature cannot ban abortion outright, leaders of the new anti-abortion majority in Congress are aiming their fire at a rare, and particularly unsettling, new method used to end late-term pregnancies.

THE only group in Washington more concerned than abortion-rights activists about President Bush's nomination of David Souter to the Supreme Court are the people who make their living electing Republicans to office.Seared by the furor over last year's Webster decision, which merely gave states additional latitude to regulate abortion, few ranking Republican operatives still want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark decision guaranteeing a woman's right to abortion.But no one knows how to extricate the party from its commitment to do just that.

Washington -- The great advantage of the right-to-life side in the abortion debate is its moral clarity. Louisiana's new anti-abortion law declares, ''Life begins at conception and . . . is a continuum until the time of death.'' If the fetus is an ''unborn child,'' fully a human being from the moment of conception, it is only reasonable that doctors who kill fetuses by abortion should be punished with up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.What's harder to understand, given this presumption, is why this statute -- the toughest in the nation, a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade -- should explicitly exempt from punishment the woman who procures an abortion.

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 -- 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.

This is the easy part, leaders of the Vote Know Coalition say. By midnight Friday, the anti-abortion organization campaigningto petition Maryland's new abortion law to referendum must deliver its first installment of signatures to the secretary of state."