Birth Control

The Baltimore City Council is expected to make final amendments tonight to a bill that would require crisis pregnancy clinics that don't provide abortion or birth control referrals to post disclaimers or face a fine. Supporters of the measure, which would affect four city clinics, argue that it will prevent women from unwittingly receiving misleading or incomplete information. But anti-abortion groups say the bill unfairly targets centers that assist women with prenatal care, counseling and baby supplies.

The Baltimore City Council is expected to make final amendments tonight to a bill that would require crisis pregnancy clinics that don't provide abortion or birth control referrals to post disclaimers or face a fine. Supporters of the measure, which would affect four city clinics, argue that it will prevent women from unwittingly receiving misleading or incomplete information. But anti-abortion groups say the bill unfairly targets centers that assist women with prenatal care, counseling and baby supplies.

A Baltimore City Council panel is set to take a key vote today on controversial legislation that would require pregnancy clinics that don't perform abortions or distribute birth control to post signs stating just that. The legislation would affect four clinics in Baltimore. It has drawn attention from people on both sides of the abortion debate who think the city council bill could become a model for legislation in other cities and towns across the county. City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake introduced the measure after meeting with abortion rights advocacy groups.

The legislation proposed by Baltimore City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake to require crisis pregnancy centers that do not provide abortion or birth control services (or referrals for those services) to post a sign saying so has turned into a tempest in a teapot. Those clinics, which are nonprofits, say they're being singled out by abortion rights groups. Advocates from NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland say they've sent undercover interns to centers like those - including one in Baltimore - and found they were given inaccurate information about abortion, such as the myths that it causes cancer and infertility.

The Pill earned its capital letters in my house when my mother found mine after my freshman year in college. The packet had been designed to resemble a woman's compact so that birth control could be discreet. But I was a flower child and we didn't wear makeup, so I hid mine between the mattress and the box springs of my bed. I think my mother was looking for trouble. "You know," she said hotly. "Your father and I never relied on artificial means. We relied on prayer." "Mom," I said, with just as much heat.

Shirley E. Handelsman, a long-time Planned Parenthood advocate and consumer affairs activist, died of respiratory failure June 18 at Roland Park Place. She was 91. Shirley Esther Silverberg, the daughter of a movie theater owner, was born in Greenville, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where she spent her early years. When she was a teenager, her family moved to Baltimore after her father took over ownership of the Park Theate in the 1100 block of N. Broadway. Growing up, Mrs. Handelsman and her sister and brother spent a lot of time watching movies.

It's a paradox worthy of the federal government: Abstinence-only education inhibits the effective promotion of abstinence. It is possible to keep teens abstinent, at least temporarily. More than a dozen programs have been shown, in peer-reviewed studies, to delay teen sex. For example, the Becoming a Responsible Teen program helped low-income African-American teenagers in Mississippi both to delay sex and to have safer sex, and its effects were visible one year later: Only 12 percent of sexually inexperienced participants became sexually active, compared with 31 percent in the comparison group.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration announced its "conscience protection" rule for the health care industry yesterday, giving everyone including doctors, hospitals, receptionists and volunteers in medical experiments the right to refuse to participate in medical care they find morally objectionable. "This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience," outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said. The right-to-refuse rule includes abortion, but Leavitt's office said it extends to other aspects of health care where moral concerns could arise, including birth control, emergency contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research or assisted suicide.

Dr. Edward F. Lewison, an internationally recognized surgeon and authority on breast cancer who was a founder and former chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Breast Clinic, died Monday of heart failure at his home in the Winthrop House condominiums on North Charles Street. He was 94. "Ed was a model practicing surgeon who had a special interest in breast cancer. He was always knowledgeable in new developments and treatments," said Dr. Richard S. Ross, former dean of the Hopkins School of Medicine.

DENVER -- At least once a day, a teenage girl walks into North High School's health clinic, wanting to find out if she's pregnant. Frequently, it turns out that she is. With the city's teen birth rate more than double the statewide rate of 24.3 births per 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17, Denver school officials are considering a proposal to dispense contraceptives in six school-based health clinics that serve the district's most impoverished students....