Reproductive Rights

Last week, the New Jersey Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that will determine what happens to seven frozen embryos remaining from a marriage that ended in divorce. It is a case that joins two of the worst aspects of American culture - the collapse of marriage and an idolatrous obsession with technology - with the greatest affliction of our political life: turning over decisions on crucial moral issues to unelected judges. In 1992, J.B. and M.B (their identities have not been disclosed in the case)

The American Medical Association yesterday unexpectedly endorsed legislation to outlaw a controversial abortion procedure, a move that could boost prospects that the procedure will be banned. The AMA's trustees initially expressed reluctance to plunge into the emotional debate, but decided to embrace the legislation with the Senate likely to vote on it today. Dr. Nancy W. Dickey, chairwoman of the AMA's board of trustees, said the procedure - known medically as intact dilation and extraction (D&X)

A GROUP OF WOMEN listens during "Las Mujeres Hablan," or "Women Speak," at Aspira, on North Sixth Street, that addressed issues affecting women. Topics at the gathering yesterday included AIDS, drugs, domestic violence and health and reproductive rights.

IN THE LONG, exhausting slog over reproductive rights in this country, some have suggested that pro-choice advocates give in on the ban of an abortion procedure with the medical term D & X, which crafty anti-abortion rights activists have succeeded in naming "partial birth abortion. " After all, the argument goes, the D & X procedure is relatively rare (accounting for 2,200 to 5,000 abortions out of 1.3 million performed annually) - and it is very disturbing. Besides, they say, it's not as if all reproductive rights are at risk.

Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg has won endorsement from enough key senators to forecast an easy confirmation to the Supreme Court, barring unforeseen developments. That provides a calm setting for assessing one doctrinal speed bump in the process: her critique of the scope and footing of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision to legalize abortion. In a 1984 speech and later articles, Ginsburg suggested that Justice Harry A. Blackmun's majority opinion was unnecessarily "muscular. " While she applauded Roe's voiding of the Texas law at issue, she wondered if Roe had outstripped its political support by striking down virtually every state abortion statute.

IN DEATH PENALTY cases, the focus usually is on the killer and not the victims. So it is with Paul Hill, executed in Florida yesterday for the 1994 shooting deaths of a doctor and his escort outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola. He went to his death proclaiming himself a martyr. To us, the attention should be on the people who have given their lives in the course of allowing women to avail themselves of their reproductive rights. They include Hill's victims, Dr. John Bayard Britton and James H. Barrett; Dr. David Gunn, killed in Florida in 1993; Shannon Lowney and Leanne Nichols, killed in Massachusetts in 1994; Police Officer Robert Sanderson, killed in Alabama in 1998; and Dr. Barnett Slepian, killed in New York, also in 1998.

IT WAS yet another triumph for distortion in the campaign to undermine reproductive rights: Last week, 17 U.S. senators reaffirmed their support for Roe v. Wade in a nonbinding resolution while voting for a law that could lead directly to the end of Roe. The Senate bill outlaws a late-term abortion procedure, but neither side believes that's all it does. The law could very well be interpreted to restrict other abortion procedures, including one commonly used after the first trimester.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration Wednesday appealed a federal judge's order to lift all age limits on who can buy morning-after birth-control pills without a prescription. The decision came a day after the Food and Drug Administration had lowered the age that people can buy the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill without a prescription to 15 - younger than the current limit of 17 - and decided that the pill could be sold on drugstore shelves near the condoms, instead of locked behind pharmacy counters.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday ruled the leading brand of emergency contraception may be sold without a prescription to females over 14. However, the agency said the decision on Plan B One-Step would not affect the prescription status of two other morning-after pill products and was not in response to a federal judge's order. Early last month, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman said Plan B One-Step must be available over the counter without restriction for all females of reproductive age and gave the FDA 30 days to comply.

Thirty years ago today, Roe vs. Wade declared that women have a right to choose abortion. Abortion remains legal in all 50 states. But Pennsylvania's Abortion Control Act - which went into effect in 1994 after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in Planned Parenthood v. Casey - has placed restrictions on women's reproductive rights. At the same time, the Pennsylvania General Assembly is dominated by legislators who overwhelmingly oppose not only abortion rights, but access to birth control.