Parental Consent

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.

Here is how members of Maryland's delegation on Capitol Hill were recorded on important roll-call votes last week:Y: Yes N: No X: Not votingHouse: House budget cutBy a vote of 172 for and 248 against, the House refused to cut Congress' own budget for next fiscal year by 1.9 percent or about $32 million. As later sent to the Senate, the bill (HR 3754) provides $1.68 billion for the House and congressional support agencies such as the Library of Congress and General Accounting Office. After the Senate adds its operating funds, the overall fiscal 1997 appropriations bill for the legislative branch will total about $2.2 billion.

WASHINGTON -- The Democrats are beginning to have some second thoughts about their plan to force President Bush into a politically embarrassing veto of an abortion rights bill. The obvious explanation is that they have been reading the opinion polls.The original plan hatched by the Democrats was to pass the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act" early enough so that the president would be obliged to veto it, as he has pledged he will do, before the Republican National Convention opens in Houston Aug. 17. Such a strategy, they figured, might exacerbate the tensions over the abortion question already expected to be prominently on display at the convention.

BOSTON -- Sooner or later it always comes down to earrings.At some point in the debate, a legislator, politician or moralist who has never previously shown the slightest interest in the public policy on body piercing will utter the same rhetorical battle cry: "If a teen-ager can't get her ears pierced without parental consent, why should she be able to get an abortion?"Frankly, the analogy still escapes me. We are, after all, talking about the realities of reproduction, not jewelry.Teen-agers can have sex (alas)

Alice Chambers didn't come here Monday night to scream militantly, wave inflammatory placards or display political buttons. She made the 60-mile trek from Westminster to participate in the Maryland March for Choice simply to make a statement by her presence."

She was barely 18, a college student, and she was -- by he own description -- "careless, stupid and ignorant."She also was pregnant and her first thought was, "I have to get rid of it." Her second thought: "My parents cannot know about this."Call her Laura, said this woman, whose name is not Laura and whose parents still don't know that she had an abortion, even though 12 years have passed.And tell her story, she added, because it is relevant to the abortion-rights bill passed by the Maryland legislature this week.

From: Kenneth A. StevensSavageBelieving that the public should be aware of how school board candidates stand on civil liberties issues, the Howard County Chapter ofthe ACLU hereby provides a summary of the responses of the four primary-winning candidates (Sandra French, Linda Johnston, Delroy Cornickand Melvina Brown) to our pre-primary questionnaire.All four were in agreement in favoring added emphasis on the Bill of Rights in the curriculum, supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and opposing a return of corporal punishment to the public schools.

With the new Republican governor providing a backdrop of cautious optimism, about 30 anti-abortion legislators met yesterday in Annapolis to discuss what abortion-related bills they will propose this session. Although those who attended described the meeting largely as a brainstorming session, the lawmakers did agree on some guidelines: They won't push for anything too controversial and instead will concentrate on one or two anti-abortion measures they believe are supported by most Marylanders.

BOSTON - If I hear one more person refer to Sandra Day O'Connor as the swing vote on the Supreme Court, I'll ban him forever from my playground. I have a different metaphor for the first woman on the Supreme Court or, as she described herself archly, the FWOTSC. She's the Justice of the Peace, occupying a rather female ground as the mediating force in the court and the country. As several justices said after Ms. O'Connor's retirement announcement, she brought us closer together. But it's pretty clear now that without Mom, the kids are going to behave badly.

HOUSTON -- Two federal courts of appeal and the state of Oregon have given their approval to physician-assisted suicide. As in Roe v. Wade, the federal courts are circumventing democracy and imposing change in our culture by discovering a hitherto unimagined right in the Constitution: the right to kill oneself with the help of medical doctors. The AMA is now rethinking its policy of rejecting such assistance, which means it will soon approve it.We should pay close attention to what has happened in the Netherlands.