Gag Rule

A federal appeals court panel in Philadelphia has struck a welcome blow for openness in state and local government in Pennsylvania. The ruling came on the eve of Monday's call by a bipartisan group of lawmakers for creation of a Public Integrity Commission. With the state's expanded open-records law now in full force, the ruling may be another small indication the stars are aligning for greater scrutiny of those conducting the public's business. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision that ruled free-speech rights were violated by the state's gag rule on disclosing complaints to the State Ethics Commission.

President Reagan's gag order for family-planning clinics is a combination of medical quackery and thought control. Unless a court or Congress stops it before March 3, doctors at clinics that receive federal family-planning aid will not be able to mention abortion, even though it is their ethical responsibility to discuss all options with their patients. (Understand, federal tax dollars are not being used to fund abortions.) This gag rule makes the speech of these medical professionals, most of whose clients are poor, less free than those who care for more affluent Americans.

It seemed like the controversy just wouldn't go away. Month after fractious month, the dispute over the trash-baling station Anthony J. Volpi is building on the site of the old Norris Iron Works in Bridgeport raged within the borough's council chambers. There, opponents of the trash station would repeatedly vent their concerns over the foul odors, rodent problems and traffic they feared the facility would create and rail at the council for allowing the station to come into the borough in the first place.

The "gag rule" - a Department of Health and Human Services regulation that prohibits health-care professionals at federally funded clinics from giving pregnant women complete information on medical options, including abortion - is bad policy and bad politics. Many Republicans, including a number on the pro-life side, oppose this regulation. So do the American Medical Association and almost 80 percent of the American people. The gag rule violates the honesty between government and citizens that must exist in a free society.

The setting, Doylestown's historic Aldie Mansion, was grand and imposing. The croque concombre was delectable, and the kudos were sincere. But the mood at Planned Parenthood Association of Bucks County's annual awards reception Wednesday evening was less celebratory than it might have been. One day before about 100 Planned Parenthood supporters, employees and volunteers gathered to honor volunteer Betsy Keidan and the Leagues of Women Voters in Bucks County for their outstanding efforts, Congress had upheld President Bush's veto of a bill overturning the so-called gag rule.

A rule passed by the Abington Board of Education earlier this month limiting public comment from individuals to three minutes drew criticism from a longtime board critic this week. Joseph Polya of Rydal referred to the time limit as a gag rule and told the board at its supplementary meeting Tuesday night that the time limit was going to cause problems. "Imposing the gag rule, you're all going to live to regret it," Polya said. "You can't silence the public. You apparently, all of you, must have suffered from a case of intellectual bankruptcy.

A federal judge yesterday barred lawyers and defendants in the Five Squad police-corruption retrial from making public statements about the case and from making any references during the retrial to the fact that the initial trial ended with a hung jury. Senior U.S. District Judge Clarence C. Newcomer enforced a local federal rule barring lawyers on both sides from giving any "extrajudicial statement" or interview, and said the rule also applied to defendants John Wilson, James Cattalo and Richard Jumper, who are representing themselves.

There is a touch of pleasure in watching the Bush people gag on their very own gag rule. The rule that was designed to cut off free speech about abortion is now making it harder for the Republicans to clear their throats. Somebody out there better perform a political Heimlich maneuver on the party. This gag rule was devised to prevent anyone who worked in one of the 4,000 federally funded family-planning clinics from using the "A" word. Doctors, nurses and counselors, who were already prohibited from performing abortions with federal money, were now forbidden from speaking about abortion.

The "gag rule" isn't really about abortion. It's about power and who has it. It's about money, and who doesn't have it. It's about politics, to be sure, but also about the danger that fanaticism poses to the Constitution. In the end, though, it's about truth, and who gets to tell it and who gets to hear it. The 1988 regulation aptly nicknamed the "gag rule" says workers in federally funded family planning programs may not speak of abortion at all - even if the patient specifically asks.

Two weeks ago the lesson was arithmetic. In a vote for Abington school board president, a group of new board members and would-be reformers were taught that the old guard's five votes outnumbered their four votes. They learned that lesson, tried to build a coalition and came prepared on Tuesday night. But this time the lesson was fractions. Although armed with five votes, they unexpectedly found that they needed two-thirds of the nine-member board - or six votes - to waive a board policy.

A federal appeals court panel in Philadelphia has struck a welcome blow for openness in state and local government in Pennsylvania. The ruling came on the eve of Monday's call by a bipartisan group of lawmakers for creation of a Public Integrity Commission. With the state's expanded open-records law now in full force, the ruling may be another small indication the stars are aligning for greater scrutiny of those conducting the public's business. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision that ruled free-speech rights were violated by the state's gag rule on disclosing complaints to the State Ethics Commission.

A nursing union locked in contentious contract negotiations says Temple University Hospital is trying to infringe on the free-speech rights of the union and its members. The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), which represents 1,500 nurses at Temple, said it had filed a complaint yesterday with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board claiming the hospital was demanding that a gag clause limiting public criticism of Temple or its managers be included in the new contract.

U.S. is making overtures to insurgents, official says An anonymous senior official said yesterday that the U.S. is talking with Sunni Arab leaders, trying to get them to sell insurgents on trading guns for politics. That news came on a day in which the U.S. military reported the deaths of four GIs in Iraq: A soldier was killed in a roadside bombing yesterday near Tikrit; two GIs died in an attack Tuesday on their base in Tikrit, and another was killed Tuesday by a bomb north of Baghdad.

W IS FOR WOMEN, indeed. That may be what the campaign slogan says, but President George W. Bush certainly isn't for women exercising their rights to make their own medical decisions. From his very first business day in office, Bush made it clear that his moderate pose on reproductive rights during the 2000 campaign was a ruse. On Jan. 22, 2001, Bush reinstalled the "global gag rule," which denies U.S. aid to family planning programs abroad that, using their own funds, provide abortions, counseling or advocate for changes in abortion laws.

Both President Bush and Congress say they support the work of the United Nations Population Fund - support that recently was backed up with the promise of $34 million for the vital program. The fund, which also goes by the acronym UNFPA, provides family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention services to poor countries, many of them not reached by U.S. international development funds. In a recent letter to the President, eight Republican members of Congress, including Pennsylvania's Jim Greenwood, wrote that U.S. support of the UNFPA is "essential for enabling this agency to provide desperately needed family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention counseling and services . . . around the world.

Airlines are still a mess As a travel agent, it was hardly a surprise to hear of a new study showing that airline service has gotten worse, despite promises they made a year ago. We've been hearing horror stories firsthand from our clients. Demand that your representatives vote for an air passenger rights bill. The power to effect positive change for the traveling public lies not in the corporate boardrooms of the airlines, whose sole interest is in their bottom lines. It lies on Capitol Hill.

The U.S. House is preparing to uphold or repeal the so-called gag rule reinstated in January by President Bush. The rule - in effect during the Reagan and elder Bush years and thrown out in the Clinton years - prevents any U.S. aid dollars from going to overseas family planning agencies using their own funds to provide abortions, give abortion counseling or even lobby for legalized abortion. Abortion foes favor the gag rule because they don't want the U.S. government to have any role - even an indirect one - in encouraging abortion around the world.

He's certainly not waffling. In the first days of his presidency, fledgling President Bush took his first steps toward implementing his administration's antiabortion agenda. Reaching backward to reinstate a Reagan-era policy called the "global gag rule," Bush has banned overseas organizations from providing abortion services or advocacy. Now, faced with congressional opposition to this undemocratic gag on speech, Bush is bobbing and weaving to avoid debate. Employing an evasive tactical maneuver, Bush reissued the gag rule in the form of a new Congress-proof executive memorandum.

Stirred by President Bush's thoughtful words of inclusion and caring in his inaugural address, my hopes were raised by the promise of compassion and our shared duty to relieve suffering that this administration would dedicate itself to improving the world for all God's children. So I was profoundly disappointed when he reinstated a policy that threatens global progress to provide life-saving family planning and reproductive health services around the world. Faithful stewardship of the Earth's resources suggests that humans have a responsibility to follow an ethic of sustainability: to build a society that meets the needs of this generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

It's not surprising that, in his first business day as president, George W. Bush would reinstate the "global gag rule" on abortion. What is shocking is that, in eight years, the anti-choice lobby hasn't come up with better rationalizations. ". . . Taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion," Bush wrote. But taxpayer funds haven't been used for these purposes for decades. What the president's executive order would restrict is talking about abortion.