Partial Birth

Reopening a contentious issue that led to the defeat of three moderate lawmakers last fall, abortion opponents are renewing their efforts to ban a controversial late-term abortion procedure in Maryland.A bill introduced this week by Sen. Larry E. Haines would outlaw what critics call "partial-birth abortion," a procedure that many state legislatures and Congress have sought to ban in recent years.Abortion-rights advocates say the legislation is unconstitutionally broad and is a veiled attempt to ban all abortions.

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens blocked two states yesterday from enforcing laws that make it a crime to perform a specific type of late-term abortion.His action marked the first time that the court or any of its members had barred a state from enforcing laws -- growing rapidly in number across the nation -- that ban a procedure known by those who oppose it as "partial-birth" abortion.In separate orders in two cases, Stevens temporarily blocked Illinois and Wisconsin laws until the Supreme Court rules on forthcoming appeals that have challenged the laws.

NEW YORK -- At a time when the Republican Party is struggling to overcome strong internal disagreements on abortion and other social issues, New York Gov. George E. Pataki says it is time to remove the anti-abortion plank from the party's platform.In remarks sure to anger the GOP's conservative wing, Pataki said Thursday that the platform should recognize "diverse opinions" on abortion."A plank that says we have to all believe or act one way or the other is inappropriate," the two-term Republican governor said in an interview.

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidates must rescue their party from the sterility into which its abortion debate has fallen. Herewith a suggested statement for any candidate seeking a position palatable to right-to-life realists:"For those of us determined to regenerate society's reverence for young life, the proposed Human Life Amendment has become a distraction. It encourages the barren politics of catharsis -- striking emotionally satisfying poses unrelated to practical policy.

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.

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.

WASHINGTON -- As the House prepared to vote today on whether to override President Clinton's veto of a ban on an abortion method critics find particularly offensive, Maryland Democrat Steny H. Hoyer led a small group of lawmakers who called instead for a ban on nearly all late-term abortions.Twice during this Congress, Clinton vetoed bills to outlaw the controversial procedure, which critics have dubbed "partial birth" because it is performed in the birth canal. While the House is expected for the second time to secure enough votes to override the president, the bill's prospects are less certain in the Senate.

WASHINGTON -- Every serving vice president since Alben Barkley in 1952 who has wanted his party's presidential nomination has gotten it. Al Gore wants his party's, so it is not too soon to be depressed. And inquisitive. Herewith some questions for him.You say that abortions should be "safe, legal and rare." Why do you care if they are rare? In Roe v. Wade, which you adore, the Supreme Court said a fetus is, unlike crab grass, only "potential" life. That makes it easy for you to defend even partial-birth abortions.

Maryland needs more argument about abortionAfter reading The Sun's editorial "Keep abortion legal" (Feb. 18), I have to respond that Marylanders have not, in fact, argued long enough about the issue of abortion. We will have argued long enough about it when we decide to adopt the only civilized solution of banning it, and stop killing our own children.I find it incongruous that The Sun supports measures to make it easier for the state to take children away from their parents, and stands behind the mandatory sale of trigger locks on all guns, all in the interest of "our children's safety," and yet can somehow rationalize abortion, a decidedly unsafe procedure for the children involved.

NEXT week marks the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court's infamous 7-2 decision that removed constitutional protection for unborn life. Far from being a settled issue, abortion on demand has spawned new controversies about life at all stages.In his radio address last Saturday, President Clinton denounced as ''morally unacceptable'' an announcement by a Chicago physicist to clone humans. He asked Congress to ban it.Let's apply to cloning the same logic the president uses on abortion, including the partial-birth variety: This should be an issue between a woman (or a man)

Catholics voted decisively in this month's election for Barack Obama, 54 percent to 45 percent, according to exit polls. This was a big reversal from four years ago, when Catholics favored George W. Bush by 5 percentage points. Now the debate is on. The U.S. Bishops, meeting last week in Baltimore, wrestled with the implications of election results that showed Catholics rejecting the dictates of the most conservative and outspoken bishops, who urged parishioners to vote Republican. The putative argument for these bishops was that only Republicans are sufficiently pure on the abortion question.

The abortion debate has raged since 1973, when the Supreme Court gave abortion constitutional protection, but the basic law of the land has proved immutable. Abortion is legal, and it's going to remain legal for a long time. Laws often alter attitudes, inducing people to accept things - such as racial integration - they once rejected. But sometimes, attitudes move in the opposite direction, as people see the consequences of the change. That's the case with abortion. The news that the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years elicits various explanations, from increased use of contraceptives to lack of access to abortion clinics.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jason Baier talks often to the little boy he calls Jamie. He imagines this boy - his son - with blond hair and green eyes, chubby cheeks, a sweet smile. But he'll never know for sure. His fiancee's sister told him about the abortion after it was over. Baier remembers that he cried. The next weeks and months go black. He knows he drank far too much. He and his fiancee fought until they broke up. "I hated the world," he said. Baier, 36, still longs for the child who might have been, with an intensity that bewilders him: "How can I miss something I never even held?"

FREDERICK -- Diners at Ruby Tuesday were greeted this week by a grisly sight: the enormous image of the mangled half-formed skull of an aborted fetus. Blown up large, bigger than an adult, the graphic "photo" was one of more than a dozen signs held up on the sidewalk along U.S. 40. The scene -- repeated across the region from Towson to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington -- is part of Defend Life's weeklong "Face the Truth Tour," a multistop, anti-abortion rally that aims to shock Maryland voters into changing their views on the procedure.

BOSTON -- Let us return to that wonderful yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Myra Bradwell couldn't be two things at the same time: a lawyer and a woman. On that occasion, Justice Joseph P. Bradley left a perfect entry for the Father Knows Best time capsule, circa 1873: "Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life." Justice Bradley went on to explain why this decision couldn't be in the hands of the woman.

A shift in strategy of abortion opponents was critical: Exploit the perceived barbarity of the partial-birth abortion procedure and direct efforts to outlaw it. President Bush, though a disappointment to many conservatives, contributed to the fight by appointing John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. And last week, the two justices did their part by helping swing the court toward a major restriction of abortion rights, a 5-4 decision that upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and extended the court's jurisdiction to "the life of the unborn."

Maryland legislators on both sides of the abortion issue say the state is not likely to change its liberal abortion law despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for more restrictive state laws. This week the court upheld a ban on a late-term procedure that critics call "partial-birth abortion." Some physicians characterized the ruling as an intrusion by politicians and judges into the medical profession, saying it interferes with a physician's ability to safely care for patients.

BOSTON -- May I remind you what else was happening on the very day in 2003 when Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act? In Florida, the Legislature passed a law that gave politicians the power to override Terri Schiavo's wishes and have her feeding tube reinserted. Up and down the East Coast, under two Bush administrations - George's and Jeb's - politicians were playing doctor and God and patient, trumping medical opinion and individual rights. May I also remind you of the day President Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban bill into law?

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.

WASHINGTON -- A Bush administration lawyer urged the Supreme Court yesterday to uphold the nation's first criminal ban on an abortion method, saying so-called "partial birth" abortions are "too close to infanticide" and not a medical necessity. "Safe alternatives are always available," U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said in defending a law passed by Congress in 2003. But two abortion-rights advocates argued that the ban, if put into effect, would unwisely limit the options of doctors who perform abortions in the second trimester and would expose some pregnant women to more dangerous surgery.