Abortion Providers

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Janet Reno is urging Congress to move swiftly to make violence or threats against abortion providers and women seeking abortions a federal crime.Ms. Reno told the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee yesterday that legislation now before it would not threaten the free-speech rights of abortion foes.She added that the legislation was needed because "in recent years, anti-abortion activists have increased the intensity of their activities from picketing to physical blockades, sabotage of facilities, stalking and harassing abortion providers, arson, bombing" and finally the murder of Dr. David Gunn at a Pensacola clinic.

I hope that my representatives in Washington will support an end to the funding of Planned Parenthood. They are a wealthy organization in their own right, and they do not need public funding. Right now, they receive over $360 million in taxpayer funding. If Congress is concerned about spending in an economic crisis, there is no reason not to cut funding the world's biggest abortion provider. Abortion is not health care, and Americans reject public money going to abortion providers either way. If women need Planned Parenthood's other services, they can still go elsewhere, and this can mean good news for women, including victims of human trafficking, as well as the unborn.

I am pro life. I mince no words about it. I believe that only God and not man should have the power to end life. My belief is no longer selective, and I no longer can rationalize war, except in defense, or the death penalty. As much as I deplore abortion, it is lawful and therefore demands that the woman be protected as well as possible by medical science. If abortion is a woman's right, then she also has a right to safety and care in medical standards ( "Lawmakers, regulators look at options to tighten oversight of abortion providers," Jan. 2)

Last Wednesday afternoon, a California teen-ager died at a hospital in Pleasonton, Calif., days after taking prescription pills to abort her early pregnancy. The circumstances surrounding her death are unclear and an autopsy is under way. But battle lines are already being drawn. Opponents of abortion say the death of Holly Patterson, 18, shows why the abortion pills are too dangerous to remain on the market, while abortion providers say that the death, while tragic, shows no such thing.

Maryland abortion clinics should operate under the same licensing requirements as other outpatient medical facilities to ensure the health of women, a group of anti-abortion lawmakers said yesterday in unveiling a new push to strengthen clinic regulations. Lawmakers calling themselves the Pro-Life Caucus said at a news conference in Annapolis that they will introduce a bill during this year's General Assembly session making free-standing abortion clinics subject to the same rules as facilities that provide cosmetic surgery or kidney dialysis.

STARKE, Fla. - The former Presbyterian minister whose scheduled execution tonight would make him the first person executed for anti-abortion violence in the United States termed his death sentence an honor yesterday and said he was convinced he had heeded God's will. "I feel very honored they are most likely going to kill me for what I did," Paul Hill said. "And I'm certainly, to be quite honest, expecting a great reward in heaven for my obedience." Barring a successful last-minute legal challenge, Hill, 49, is to be given a lethal injection tonight for killing abortion doctor John Britton and a volunteer escort.

WASHINGTON - In the small, historic port city of Beaufort, S.C. - a sort of Charleston in miniature - the old homes with their narrow hallways and small rooms have always made adequate office suites for the physicians clustered by the downtown waterfront. But one those doctors, William Lynn, who runs clinics that provide abortions, recently closed his down. Among his reasons for not renewing his lease: the specter of new regulations for abortion clinics in South Carolina - requiring such safety measures as extra-wide hallways and doorways for the movement of stretchers and wheelchairs - which would have made it impossible to continue his practice in one of those old restored buildings without costly renovations.

Dr. Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician with a practice in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., returned home from synagogue Friday night with his wife, Lynn, and greeted his four sons. Then he stepped into his kitchen, where a sniper's bullet crashed through a back window and struck him in the chest, police said.He fell to the floor, calling for help, but he died within two hours.Slepian was one of a handful of doctors who provide abortions in the Buffalo area.Law enforcement officials said yesterday that his slaying was the most deadly example of what they described as an annual pattern of anti-abortion violence in Canada and western New York.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- An often-picketed abortion clinic, forced to close this week when frightened landlords refused to renew the lease, will reopen in two weeks, its owner vowed yesterday.The tactics used to close the Aware Woman Health Center are a preview of the next wave of anti-abortion activities, say leaders from both sides.Harassment of landlords and other tenants proved effective in Broward County last year, when protesters drove the Women's Clinic out of two rented sites and into a third.

Designs unveiled for black history museum The Smithsonian Institution unveiled Friday designs showing six competing visions for the $500 million National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington. Six teams, including four with ties to Baltimore, submitted the designs as part of a competition to select the architect for the project, which is expected to open in 2015 on Constitution Avenue next to the Washington Monument. Architects will present their plans to a jury early next month, and a winner will be announced April 14. The design concepts will be on view through April 6 at the Smithsonian's Institution Building on the Mall, also known as the Castle, at 1000 Jefferson Drive S.W. Ed Gunts Afghan soldier kills two U.S. troops KABUL: The U.S. military says an Afghan soldier shot and killed two U.S. coalition troops Friday in northern Afghanistan.