National Abortion Federation

In the months of grueling drama surrounding his nomination for surgeon general, and even in defeat last week, Dr. Henry Foster gave a human face to the difficult question of abortion. But many more of the crucial decisions Congress will make about abortion this summer promise to be quieter and even arcane. They will take the form of sometimes intricate amendments and riders to appropriations bills. The language may seem impenetrable, but both sides in the debate believe the impact on women's choice about pregnancy will be real.

Quietly, almost secretly, the Planned Parenthood clinic here is scheduled to introduce a new service to its patients today. That service is abortion, and it has taken the clinic 2 1/2 years - marked by frustrated searching, repeated turndowns and burgeoning local controversy - to find two physicians willing to perform abortions one day a week. "It has been a frustrating process for us," clinic director Lois Backus said. The clinic's staff members directly or indirectly contacted nearly every one of York County's more than a dozen OB-GYN doctors, asking if they would take the job. They approached York Hospital's medical residents, posted help- wanted ads at national meetings, and called OB-GYN department heads in Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore.

IN A MATTER of a few moments - long enough for men with badges to say that they had a search warrant - Kermit B. Gosnell's 43-year medical career came to a grinding halt. A squad of imposing federal agents greeted Gosnell with the warrant when he arrived at his West Philadelphia practice, the Women's Medical Society, on Feb. 18. The agents began raiding the clinic, which was filled at the time with patients who were waiting to be seen by the doctor. "It was tremendously traumatic - totally unexpected," Gosnell, 69, said this week.

No one on either side of the intractable abortion debate was sorry Monday to learn that Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of first-degree murder. And in their reactions to the verdict, both opponents of abortion and advocates for abortion rights agreed that the Gosnell case was indicative of a problem. They defined that problem, however, in completely different ways. Michael Ciccocioppo, executive director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, said in an e-mailed statement: "For the sake of all Gosnell's victims, let us never forget the rampant disregard for life that was allowed to continue for decades in our state.

At least four anthrax-threat letters received by reproductive-health clinics appear to be hoaxes based on preliminary field tests, but analysis of the contents of about 150 other letters is ongoing, according to the National Abortion Federation, a trade group for abortion providers. Clinic officials said they had little doubt that the letters that began arriving Monday at clinics across the country were sent by antiabortion extremists. Between 1998 and 2000, clinics received more than 80 letters that specifically threatened anthrax contamination - all of which proved to be hoaxes.

THE ANTHRAX-LACED letters sent to various media outlets, Microsoft and Senate majority leader Tom Daschle have so far killed only one person, yet the poisonous press releases have added to the climate of unease gripping the nation. But let's be realistic. The chances of you - valued reader - being a victim of an anthrax letter is minuscule. There is a devious logic behind the anthrax attacks. The letters have gone to either high-profile personalities or to high-profile news organizations that can be counted on to report the news they were attacked.

The sniper who killed Barnett Slepian here two nights ago took the life of the last remaining physician who performed abortions at Buffalo's only abortion clinic, and providers of the procedure criticized police yesterday for not doing more to guard his life. U.S. and Canadian authorities had issued warnings last Monday to abortion providers throughout the Northeast, following a series of shootings that had occurred at this time of year since 1994. Slepian's death left Buffalo GYN Womenservices, the only abortion clinic in the city of 300,000, with no physician on staff.

By Kate Michelman and Carol E. Tracy With Kermit Gosnell's criminal trial under way in Philadelphia, public outrage at the physician accused of murdering one woman and seven infants increases with each grisly revelation. In a state that has led the nation in imposing restrictions on abortion, how could such atrocities go undetected? The answer goes back to the 1970s and '80s, when abortion policy was established. In the wake of Roe v. Wade , Pennsylvania moved to impose as many barriers as possible to abortion access.

Police started round-the-clock protection yesterday of an abortion doctor after an anonymous caller in Canada told authorities the doctor was "next" to be killed. The threat was made in a call to the Hamilton Spectator newspaper after a hate flyer with the picture of a slain Amherst doctor was left in the Hamilton police washroom. Police Inspector David Bowen called the flyer a "nasty poster" with a picture of Dr. Barnett Slepian, the Amherst doctor killed Friday night when a sniper shot him in the back from woods behind the doctor's home.

The company that makes the abortion pill RU-486 will begin shipping the drug to clinics and physicians' offices on Monday. Availability of the drug is unlikely to have any immediate effect on access to abortion, local and national abortion-rights advocates said. Pennsylvania's Department of Health yesterday issued a statement affirming that any doctor who prescribes the drug will be subject to the state's Abortion Control Act. Among other things, that means any doctor who wants to give a patient RU-486, which will be marketed as Mifeprex, will have to become a registered abortion provider.