Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 19, 1992 TAG: 9203190280
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Richmond bureau
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Planned Parenthood executives said Wednesday that they will give Gov. Douglas Wilder a scroll with nearly 10,000 signatures of Virginians opposed to a bill that would require that a parent be notified when an unmarried teen-age girl seeks an abortion.
But an anti-abortion lobbyist countered by citing public opinion polls showing that large majorities of Virginians favor parental notification.
Grace Sparks, executive director of the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, said her group has spent two years acquiring signatures against the parental-notification bill, which passed the legislature this year. The names fill a scroll more than one-quarter mile long, she said.
"It's just bad social policy" to attempt to write into law measures forcing better family relationships, said the Rev. Robert E. Vaughn Jr. of the Providence-Woodland United Methodist Church in Suffolk. Vaughn was one of two Methodist ministers who attended a news conference called by opponents of the measure Wednesday.
The news conference seemed designed in part to rebut arguments made Tuesday by anti-abortion advocates who contend that Wilder will be breaking a 1989 campaign promise if he fails to sign the bill.
Though elected as a strong abortion-rights supporter, Wilder said repeatedly in the campaign that he felt parents should be notified when their teen-age daughters seek abortions.
Anne B. Kincaid, a lobbyist for the Family Foundation of Virginia, which has worked for eight years to get such a law, warned Tuesday that Wilder "is setting up for a veto" of the controversial bill.
Kincaid, in an interview Wednesday, repeated that assertion and added that with polls showing strong public support for the bill, a veto would run counter to the governor's recent claims that he is serving as a "citizens' lobbyist."
Wilder has called the bill poorly drafted and said he will not sign it as written. He could propose amendments to be considered at the assembly's veto session April 15 or could reject the bill outright.
Kincaid has acknowledged that it would take a miracle for her group to get the two-thirds vote in each House necessary to override a veto.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.