Access To Abortion

As virtually every Maryland voter knows by now, a question regarding abortion will be on our ballot in November.We will be asked whether we wish to ratify a law crafted by our General Assembly to protect abortion rights in the state in the event the U.S. Supreme Court reverses its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. The bill before us contains a parental-notification provision for cases involving minors, but no other restrictions on a woman's access to abortion during the first trimester.The battle over the referendum is shaping up along the usual lines: those who advocate a woman's unrestricted right to abortion urging a ''yes'' vote; those who believe abortion is wrong under any circumstances urging ''no.

BOWIE -- Two weeks ago, when anti-abortion activists Jayne and Michael Bray had their fifth child, they gave her a name that seems to sum up their personal credo. They called their daughter Perseverance.For 10 years, the Maryland couple has fought abortion: Mrs. Bray, a suburban housewife who sells Mary Kay cosmetics, has blockaded abortion clinics. Her husband, a pastor in the Reformation Lutheran Church, was jailed four years for conspiring to bomb them.The Supreme Court, in the only abortion case it will consider this term, will hear arguments Wednesday in Bray vs. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, a Virginia case involving the right of women to have access to abortion clinics without interference from anti-abortion activists.

For the first time since the Supreme Court gave American women an unrestricted right to abortion in early pregnancy, Roe vs. Wade seems to be in real danger of being overruled. Last week the state of Louisiana, overriding its own governor's veto of a law which would criminalize most abortions, became the fourth state in the past two years to enact statutes which can be sustained only if the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade.Given the direction of the court, such a turnabout appears to rest on a single vote -- that of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has yet to declare herself on the fundamental issue of whether women have a basic constitutional right to determine whether to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Although abortion is legal in this country, a decade of presidential opposition to reproductive rights has produced significant limitations on the ability to obtain an abortion. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to reverse one particularly offensive restriction -- a three-year-old Pentagon policy that prohibits U.S. servicewomen and military dependents overseas from obtaining abortions at military health facilities, even at their own expense. Because these women are often serving in countries where abortion is illegal, the policy in effect denies them any access to a safe, legal abortion, simply because they are serving their country overseas.

Boston -- Up in New Hampshire, where mud season is giving way to black flies, the legislature is getting ready to flash the famous Granite State streak of independence. This conservative Republican territory, known for its presidential primaries and its lack-of-tax structure, is expected to pass a resolution in support of the abortion pill. It will offer the state as an American test site for RU486.The legislators don't expect to see a team flying in from Europe to set up a lab in downtown Concord the morning after the vote.