Late Term

The Maryland Senate voted yesterday to ban a late-term abortion procedure, the first time either chamber of the General Assembly has approved a major abortion restriction since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.The 25-22 vote sends the measure to the House, where another close vote is expected if the issue reaches the floor.Gov. Parris N. Glendening has pledged to veto the legislation because it does not include an exception to allow the procedure -- termed "partial-birth abortion" by opponents -- to protect a mother's health.

To those who support "choice" at all costs: Read the grand jury report on Kermit Gosnell. He is the Philadelphia abortion doctor awaiting a verdict in his trial, where he is accused of murdering four babies allegedly born alive and killing 41-year-old refugee Karnamaya Mongar. The charges represent only a fraction of the horrors that went on at the Women's Medical Society clinic, according to the report, where hundreds of children died by "snipping" - his term for sticking scissors into the back of a baby's neck and cutting its spinal cord - and where women were routinely butchered in late-term abortions by untrained medical staff and doped up according to how much they could pay. Here are some lowlights from the report: •"A nineteen-year-old girl was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus.

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration lawyers asked the Supreme Court yesterday to reinstate the first federal law banning a late-term abortion procedure, arguing that it should be outlawed because it is gruesome and is "never medically indicated" as a safer surgical procedure. The government's appeal asks the court to overturn the decision of a U.S. appeals court in St. Louis, which struck down the federal law as unconstitutional. It came on the same day the Senate took up the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States.

I was surprised and delighted to open The Sun and read an inspiring commentary on the op-ed page ("Abortion ethics not so simple," Aug. 28). Christopher Dreisbach has finally given this topic the objective, honest look it so rightly deserves. This kind of material not only credits him, but The Sun by association. The core of the piece asks us to step back and ask what makes us human and what constitutes life. These are the questions that drive those of us who are pro-life, not a wish to control others.

WASHINGTON -- Tens of thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Washington yesterday, as they have each of the last 22 years on the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, to press the government for changes in the law.On this occasion, a principal focus of the march was to support legislation that would outlaw a rarely used late-term form of abortion. Both the Senate and the House have passed versions of such a bill, but President Clinton has said he will veto it.Both sides in the abortion debate see the legislation as important, as it is the first time since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 that Congress has voted to ban any method of abortion.

Political disputes over abortion aren't new. But with the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, up for Senate hearings today, supporters and opponents disagree on everything but the bill's punctuation.They argue over what, exactly, the term "partial-birth abortion" means; how often the procedure is done, and whether a ban is constitutional.And they disagree on whether Congress, instead of doctors, should be regulating a medical procedure.The bill would ban what both sides agree is a grim form of late-term abortion.

WASHINGTON -- The new wave of bans on certain late-term abortions -- laws that exist in nearly identical form in 31 states -- appeared to be in constitutional trouble in the Supreme Court yesterday. Justices who remain from the coalition that last upheld abortion rights eight years ago, along with newer justices, questioned the breadth of a Nebraska law. Their skepticism put in doubt the constitutionality of similar laws in other states and nearing passage in Congress. Maryland has no such law. As the justices held a hearing on their first abortion-rights case since 1992, protesters from both sides of the issue milled around noisily on the court's front sidewalk.

NO matter how they phrase it, anti-abortion advocates' efforts to craft a bill banning so-called "partial-birth" abortions fail to pass constitutional muster. When the measure comes up for a vote in the House Environmental Matters Committee, it should be killed.Maryland's attorney general says the most recent effort is unconstitutional on several grounds. It is a back-door attempt by abortion opponents to chip away at the legal right of a woman to have the procedure in this state.Abortion decisions are best left to a woman and her physician.

HERE'S A question about abortion: Why was the right to an abortion protected by the Supreme Court in 1973? Answer: to stop death. Women were dying in significant numbers trying to end crisis pregnancies. The Roe vs. Wade ruling ensured that women have a basic right to end a pregnancy -- and not sacrifice their lives or health in the process. Pro-life supporters argue that now, to protect women, innocent potential lives are lost to grisly abortion procedures. It is a wrenching choice.

In a surprise vote that likely defuses an explosive State House issue, the Maryland Senate rejected an anti-abortion bill yesterday, as a handful of swing legislators decided the measure was too broadly drafted.After nearly two hours of debate that included graphic descriptions of abortion procedures, the Senate voted 26-21 to send the legislation back to committee - a rare move that appears to end General Assembly consideration of the matter this year.While Sen. Larry E. Haines, the bill's chief sponsor, promised to continue fighting for the bill, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had a concise assessment of the measure's chances this year:"It's over."

Lawyers for an abortion doctor charged with murder under Maryland's fetal homicide law filed court papers Friday calling the statute illegal and saying that prosecutors are using the law to effectively ban the constitutionally protected medical procedure in Cecil County. The motion - the first detailed defense in the groundbreaking case - also calls the grand jury indictment filed against Dr. Nicola I. Riley, 46, "an attempt to intimidate" physicians into not performing abortions. Riley was ordered held on $300,000 bail.

Nearly two decades ago, members of the Maryland General Assembly approved a law clarifying a woman's right to an abortion. It permits late-term abortions to save the life or health of the mother or when the fetus is seriously abnormal or deformed. This action was not taken lightly — or without considerable debate and public scrutiny. Lawmakers were concerned that this basic right to choose might be denied women if the Supreme Court ever overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

One of the country's most prominent late-term abortion doctors will begin offering the procedure in Maryland beginning next week, a professional association announced Tuesday. Dr. Leroy Carhart will begin performing both early and late-term abortions at Germantown Reproductive Health Services next week, said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association of abortion providers, of which the Germantown facility is a member. Carhart, who is based in Nebraska but is licensed to practice medicine in Maryland, announced earlier in November that he intended to set up shop in the Washington area and in Iowa because of a Nebraska law banning most abortions after 20 weeks into pregnancy.

This past July, I was happily pregnant and eagerly expecting the arrival of our second child. For nearly eight months, I had been loving my baby in utero and explaining to our 2 1/2 -year old son that he was going to become a big brother. Never in my worst nightmare did I imagine I would need to have an abortion - and certainly not late term. At my 28-week sonogram, the ventricles in our baby's brain measured a little elevated, and I was sent for further testing. Two weeks later, I had an MRI, and my worst nightmare was realized - we learned the baby was missing a main piece of its brain.

My late father and I share part of the blame for the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor gunned down on Sunday. Until I got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of my former hate-filled rhetoric, I was both a leader of the so-called pro-life movement and a part of a Republican Party hate machine masquerading as the moral conscience of America. In the late 1970s, my father, evangelical pro-life leader Francis Schaeffer, along with Dr. C. Everett Koop (who soon become surgeon general in the Reagan administration)

Abortion ruling is affirmation of life On a Sunday when our nation was mourning over the slaughter at Virginia Tech, it is unfortunate that The Sun chose to use some of its editorial space to bemoan the Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban on partial-birth abortion ("Undermining abortion rights," editorial, April 22). The Sun admits that "no reasonable person can contest the grim details of the disputed, late-term procedure, which involves partial removal of the fetus and crushing the skull for easier evacuation."

YOU DON'T have to be a full-fledged abortion opponent to have qualms about the "partial-birth" late-term abortion method outlawed by a bill approved recently by Congress. Neither do you have to be a no-holds-barred supporter of abortion rights to have problems with this latest ploy by anti-abortion activists.Proponents of the bill have been clear about their political goal of using understandable revulsion at the description of the procedure to brand any opponents of the ban as extremists in their support of abortion.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court changed course on abortion yesterday and cleared the way for states to pass laws designed to discourage women from ending their pregnancies. In a 5-4 decision, the court said the "government has a legitimate and substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life." The ruling upheld a federal ban on a disputed midterm abortion method that critics call "partial-birth abortion." Seven years ago, the court, also by a 5-4 margin, struck down a nearly identical state law on the grounds that it could force some women to undergo riskier surgery during the fourth or fifth month of a pregnancy.

A district court judge refused yesterday to reinstate criminal charges against a nationally known doctor who performs abortions, ruling that the Kansas attorney general had overstepped his authority in the case. Last week, Attorney General Phill Kline charged Dr. George Tiller with performing illegal late-term abortions at his Wichita clinic and not reporting them accurately to state authorities. Hours later, Sedgwick County Judge Paul W. Clark dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds: Only the locally elected district attorney, he said, has the power to bring such charges.