Parental Notification

Opponents of Question 6, the abortion law on the November ballot, say it shields a physician from lawsuits rising from "negligent" decisions to perform an abortion. They also charge the law would allow abortions to be performed by any type of physician, even a psychiatrist, an allergist or an ophthalmologist. These charges distort the law -- and the facts.The first charge relates in part to the law's provision for bypassing the requirement to notify the parents of a minor who seeks an abortion.

A Senate committee killed legislation yesterday to allow women to get the so-called morning-after pill from pharmacists without having to see a doctor, one day after the measure won approval from the House of Delegates. The Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee voted 6-5 to defeat the emergency contraception measure, which would have set regulations governing how women could get access to drugs used to prevent pregnancy. Proponents said the legislation would decrease the number of abortions performed in the state, while some opponents worried it would encourage young women to be promiscuous.

Here is how members of Maryland's delegation on Capitol Hill were recorded on important roll-call votes last week. The House had no contested votes:Y: YES N: NO X: NOT VOTINGSENATE: TO REJECT CUTBy a vote of 28 for and 69 against, the Senate rebuffed an attempt to transfer $3.15 billion from the Pentagon budget to domestic programs such as cancer and mental illness research, Head Start, child immunization and breast cancer screening.The vote occurred as the Senate passed the $204 billion fiscal 1992 appropriations bill (HR 2707)

As the General Assembly prepares to debate a woman's right to abortion, the majority of Anne Arundel's state lawmakers say they favor some restrictions.Even many of the county's legislators who have embraced abortion rights express reservations about a movement to pass a"clean" codification of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions nationwide.A group of 14 senators -- led by Clarence Blount, D-Baltimore, and Vernon Boozer, R-Baltimore -- introduced legislation late Thursday that would preserve abortion without restrictions such as parental notification for minors.

LOS ANGELES -- Gov. Bill Clinton, continuing his strategy of addressing voters directly through popular television shows, invaded the airwaves territory of the hip young adult yesterday by taking questions from under-30 viewers at the studios of Music Television (MTV).Although most of the questions were not much different from those repeatedly asked by their elders this year, the rap-and-roll set did smoke Mr. Clinton out on two matters of relative importance. He said that if he had the chance, he would appoint Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York to the Supreme Court and, yes, that he would have inhaled that infamous marijuana joint had he known how.Mr.

Citing "health care concerns," some 50 Maryland doctors voiced their opposition yesterday to Question 6, the state's new abortion law set for referendum next Nov. 3.The physicians, speaking at a news conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in the Inner Harbor, described the abortion law as "bad medicine" because, among other things, it would fail to protect the "health and safety" of women seeking abortions."

MANY of your letter writers on Question 6 have been well-informed and genuinely concerned about the health of Marylanders. A few, however, have not.Linda Fallek of Annapolis wrote that approximately one-third of women undergoing abortion experience morbidity or complications including hemorrhage, retained fragments, embolism, perforation, anesthetic complications, sterility and risk of trouble in future pregnancies. Instead, the risks of morbidity and complications following abortion are less than those following normal delivery.

Sending a signal he will not waver on his deeply held beliefs, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele will break from the new Republican administration's stance on abortion tonight by joining the annual Annapolis March for Life rally. Steele's participation in the event is energizing members of Maryland's anti-abortion community, who say it is the first time in recent memory that a statewide elected official has actively embraced their cause. "It is an encouragement to the pro-life folks to see a newly elected official standing up for life," said David Lam, executive director of Maryland Right to Life, a sponsor of tonight's event.

BOSTON -- Now that we have waved "Bye, Bye, Brownie" to Michael Brown, the hapless head of FEMA, could we turn our sights back to another agency on the skids: the Food and Drug Administration? If FEMA is an example of a government run on cronyism, the FDA has become a portrait of a government run on ideology. After its blunders over Vioxx and defective heart devices, it has now deliberately tanked the homeland emergency contraceptives. Days before Katrina hit New Orleans and flooded the news, FDA chief Lester Crawford announced that he was indefinitely postponing the sale of Plan B over the counter.

From the start, we have had deep concerns about the parental notification provision in the abortion-rights bill the Senate passed Tuesday. Although we most assuredly encourage the concept of teen-agers seeking advice from parents on an issue as serious as whether to carry a pregnancy to term, we maintain that a female who is old enough to decide to engage in behavior which results in pregnancy should have the right to decide to terminate that pregnancy as...