Access To Abortion

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago today, when the Supreme Court issued long-awaited rulings in two abortion cases, even advocates of legal abortion were surprised by the extent of their victory. After years of fighting for incremental liberalization, almost no one expected the court to overrule virtually all restrictions on legalized abortion.The decision erased the need for an underground network of abortion counselors and providers. Some of these services had offered access to competently performed abortions.

Opponents of Question 6, the abortion law on the Novembe ballot, maintain the bill would allow minors to obtain abortions without their parents' knowledge. They say the law's provision requiring a physician to notify a parent has exceptions that make the requirement meaningless.Here are the facts: Currently, a girl under 18 years old can get an abortion in Maryland without parental involvement. If Question 6 passes, this state would have a parental notification requirement that meets constitutional muster.

With the resounding approval of Maryland's abortion law, state voters have helped re-shape the national landscape for the abortion debate. And with the election of a Democratic president committed to abortion rights, as well as an larger contingent of pro-choice legislators in Congress, Americans have shown that they value reproductive freedom and will vote to protect it.Question 6 was one of only two abortion ballot questions facing voters on Tuesday....

THE LIST of violent acts against abortion clinics is long, but until this week, the fatalities in this terrorism had come from shootings. With the death in Birmingham of 35-year-old Robert Sanderson, an off-duty police officer, we have now seen the first clinic bomb designed to kill people, rather than to damage property. According to Jim Cavanaugh, special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, this bomb was "a smaller device intended to kill or injure."Mr. Sanderson's death is not the first fatality stemming from abortion-clinic violence.

Although abortion rates in America are in a steady decline, they are up sharply among minority teen-agers and girls of all races under 15, a new study shows.The findings were released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, the nonprofit research organization regarded as the premier tracker of America's abortion trends.In a joint study in the journal Family Planning Perspectives, the institute and CDC reported that:* The overall abortion rate in the United States is down 6 percenbetween 1980 and 1987, the most recent year for trend data.

While the Republican Party seeks to establish majorities in Congress by knocking off Democratic office-holders on Nov. 8, Maryland's Second Congressional District is one piece of turf the GOP must fight to defend. The seat became open when Rep. Helen Bentley, the five-term Republican incumbent, launched her ultimately unsuccessful gubernatorial bid. Given the district's conservative demographics and Republican voting patterns, Mrs. Bentley might have held onto the seat for many more years.

ONLY A SMALL minority of the women who will seek abortions this year know what that process was like 25 years ago, before the Supreme Court changed the political landscape for reproductive rights. But if, at century's end, it is difficult to remember the network of underground connections, the clandestine counseling services, or even the hospital review committees in states that had liberalized their abortion laws, it would have been equally impossible in 1973 to predict that after two-and-a-half decades of legalized abortion, political discourse on this issue would be as raw as ever.

WASHINGTON - The House passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for an adult to transport an underage girl across state lines to have an abortion without the consent of her parents. A vote on a similar bill is expected in the Senate later this spring or early this summer, and backers says its chances are good. The measure, called the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, passed 270-157, and was a victory for abortion opponents, who have been pushing an ambitious legislative agenda now that Congress is under strengthened Republican control.

Like most other denominations in this country, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) remains on record as supporting a woman's access to legalized abortion. In a debate in which there is precious little room for common ground between two extremes, the country's largest Lutheran denomination voted overwhelmingly last week that in some cases abortion could be a morally responsible decision, even when it is not necessary in order to save the life of the mother.In doing so, the church's assembly rejected a strict anti-abortion position, as well as a more liberal approach that would affirm freedom of conscience in regard to the issue.

BALTIMORE-area residents should be gravely concerned about merger talks between the Greater Baltimore Medical Center and St. Joseph Medical Center, especially in light of four other proposed or announced mergers in Maryland involving Roman Catholic hospitals. Such alliances would significantly reduce the number of centers providing comprehensive medical services for women.Already, GBMC officials have said no elective abortions would be performed after such a merger, but tubal ligations and in-vitro fertilizations would continue.