Family Planning

The voters of Maryland overwhelmingly approved the law protecting a woman's right to choose when to have a child. By a 62 percent-38 percent margin, they decided that the state should not interfere with this very personal decision before a fetus becomes viable. This reflects the will of the people, not "the extreme agenda of the abortion industry," as Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien wrote in his recent letter to the editor (Readers respond, Sept 12.). Under our law, once a doctor decides that the fetus is capable of sustained survival outside the womb, an abortion can be performed only if it is necessary to protect the life or health of the mother or if the fetus is affected by a genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality.

A debate is raging as to whether there is sinister intent in proposed Baltimore City legislation requiring crisis pregnancy centers to be clear on the services they provide prospective clients. As physicians and public health professionals who live and work in Baltimore, we are surprised by the debate and troubled that there are those who would advocate for less than full transparency. In 1979, the United Nations adopted a resolution that recognizes the right of all women to "specific educational information to help to ensure the health and well-being of families, including information and advice on family planning," as well as "access to adequate health care facilities, including information, counseling and services on family planning."

Dr. Melvyn C. Thorne, a semiretired professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health who was interested in maternal child care and family planning in developing countries, died Aug. 16 of a heart attack at his Roland Park home. He was 77. The son of a mechanic and a homemaker, Dr. Thorne was born and raised in San Francisco. After graduation in 1950 from Lowell High School, he worked his way to Europe aboard a freighter. "He had decided not to go to college and spent time bicycling and traveling throughout Europe," said his wife of 52 years, the former Dorothy Richardson, an educator he met when both were students at the University of California at Berkeley.

Today, on World Contraception Day, the Surya clinic in Patna city in the Indian state of Bihar will, as always, be full of women, their children and their travel companions, waiting to see the doctors for family planning services. The female doctors are young, many recent graduates of the medical colleges, and sometimes pairing up to counsel clients on contraceptive methods. The government of India has accredited this private clinic run by the Janani network so that women opting for birth control pills, a 10-year IUD, or a three-month injectable contraceptive pay nothing.

THOUGHT much about the abortion issue lately? Probably not. And that's the idea.An eerie quiet has come over many of the usually clamorous sources of abortion opposition. From Christian Coalition guru Pat Robertson to hyper-right commentators like Cal Thomas to the pack of Republican presidential runners wheezing ever farther behind Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the issue is being downplayed. If they are asked, then, yes, they are still for criminalizing abortion once again, but the old fire has been banked, or seems to have been.

IN HINDSIGHT, a plan to invite the passionately anti-Bush activist group MoveOn.org to participate in a federally supported conference on world health issues was a mistake akin to waving a red flag in front of a bull, sponsors acknowledge. Neither George Soros nor the left-leaning organization he finances actually took part in the Global Health Council's international meeting last week. But the mere connection was enough to raise the usual conservative grumbling about health professionals not wedded to the president's ideological agenda to an intimidating roar.

BEIJING -- Little could be more revealing about the attitude of China's leadership toward women than the near-hysterical attitude it is taking toward the two coming meetings on women.As might be expected for a big event, the usual efforts are being made: the streets swept, propaganda banners hung, dissidents rounded up, beggars shuffled off and police stationed at every intersection.But unlike sensitive anniversaries or national holidays, authorities now have another task: trying to protect the people from a horde of subversive females, variously described as HIV-positive, sex mad, closet prostitutes, lesbian and prone to naked demonstrations on street corners.

Blame students, not MarchioneAs a secretary for the Baltimore County public schools, with 23 years of school and central office experience, I feel compelled to speak out in defense of interim Superintendent Anthony G. Marchione ("NACCP opposes schools leader,'' Feb. 27).A better qualified individual to lead the Baltimore County public schools would be hard to find. Dr. Marchione is a fair, sensitive, experienced educator whose entire 40-year career has been devoted to the boys and girls of Baltimore County, that each student regardless of race be given the best possible education.

WASHINGTON -- Taking a militant page from the opposition's strategy manual, the abortion rights lobby is targeting 15 vulnerable freshman Republicans in the House for defeat, preparing to publicize their votes on more than a score of anti-abortion measures as too fervid for their moderate suburban constituencies.All of these freshmen won by margins of less than 5 percentage points two years ago, and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League has rated them the most susceptible to defeat in November.