Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 22, 1992 TAG: 9201220225
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Baltimore Sun and Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
COURT TO REVIEW ABORTION
The Supreme Court reopened the abortion controversy Tuesday, agreeing to rule before summer on a major new test of its landmark 1973 decision of Roe vs. Wade.Although the Supreme Court deliberately shied away from promising to decide - one way or the other - whether to overrule the 1973 decision, its coming ruling in a Pennsylvania case is expected to go far to settle the fate of abortion rights.
The kind of final decision that is widely expected in that case - narrowing the right to an abortion in only the rarest emergency situations - would shift much of the heated controversy to the political arena, to Congress and to state legislatures.
The justices limited their review to the state law's requirements that minors seeking abortions obtain parental consent, that wives inform their husbands before obtaining an abortion, for a 24-hour waiting period for abortions, and that doctors inform women seeking abortions about alternatives.
The court's announcement came on a day when rhetoric from abortion abolitionists and the advocates of abortion rights spread from polite news conferences to sidewalk confrontations outside abortion clinics.
More demonstrations from both sides are expected today, the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision.
Even if the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights altogether, federal and state legislators still could act to keep abortion as an option, if they wished.
Both sides expect the increasingly conservative court - with a majority of justices appointed by Republican Presidents Reagan and Bush - will eventually overturn Roe vs. Wade, sending the abortion issue to state legislatures to decide.
"Roe is dying before our eyes, and all I can say is good riddance," Randall Terry of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue told reporters Tuesday.
"The clock is ticking," said Kate Michelman of the National Abortion Rights Action League. "The days of safe and legal abortion in America are now numbered."
Even if Roe vs. Wade is not reversed in the Pennsylvania case, activists on both sides of the issue predicted the justices would open the door to other state legislatures enacting restrictions on the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.
The Supreme Court's action came near the opening of the presidential election campaign in which abortion will be a major issue.
As the primaries are run, the Supreme Court will be moving ahead with its review of abortion rights, with a hearing probably in late April - before the final primaries. A ruling is expected in late June, before the presidential nominating conventions.
Michelman said NARAL will begin airing next week a series of political TV spots focusing on abortion rights and Bush's opposition.
The Supreme Court acted Tuesday on two appeals from Pennsylvania - a state where strongly anti-abortion majorities in the legislature have been trying for 17 years to restrict the right to end pregnancies. Two of those laws are at stake now.
One of the new appeals urged the Supreme Court to use the Pennsylvania case to make a broad statement on whether Roe vs. Wade remains the law of the land. The other asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether states will have a much freer hand to act to stop abortions.
The Pennsylvania case could give the Supreme Court an opportunity for its first-ever ruling to strike down a constitutional right it had established itself.
The justices said that the core issue before them was whether the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia had erred in upholding in November all but one clause in two anti-abortion laws.