Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 26, 1992 TAG: 9203260186
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The vast majority of 130 Planned Parenthood groups, which together run hundreds of clinics, will say no to the government money, said Dr. Kenneth Edelin of Boston, chairman of the Planned Parenthood Federation.
That will be their reaction, he predicted, to last week's release by the Bush administration of a new set of rules to control abortion discussions with pregnant patients who visit federally funded clinics.
No version of a federal "gag rule" ever has gone into effect, but the new rule is due to take effect in about 2 1/2 months.
Meanwhile, the administration gave its first formal indication that it will join the anti-abortion side when the Supreme Court takes up a major new test case on abortion rights in April. It asked the Supreme Court to give government attorneys time to support a Pennsylvania challenge to the basic 1973 abortion ruling in Roe vs. Wade.
President Bush had said last fall that he expected his administration to relax rules, dating from 1988, that all but barred any discussion of abortion at family planning clinics getting federal funds under a 1970 law.
The Supreme Court last year upheld the 1988 rules, but challenges to them mounted in Congress after that, leading the administration to reconsider.
The revised rules came out Friday, and administration officials went to some lengths to assure reporters that the new rules would give doctors more freedom to discuss abortion as an option with clinic patients.
Wednesday, however, Edelin challenged those assurances as "a deceitful spin." He said the actual regulations do not support that view.
He added that even if doctors did gain some added freedom to mention abortion, the new rules keep in force a flat ban on discussion by clinic staff members of abortion as an option. He and others at a news conference said that almost all of the pregnancy and birth-control counseling that is done at family planning clinics is by non-doctors - nurses, nurse-practitioners and counselors.
The new rules expressly bar such clinic aides from discussing abortion as an option, saying that only doctors may mention that option directly to patients. Doctors, however, are forbidden to refer any patient elsewhere expressly to get an abortion.
Family planning clinics have the option of surrendering federal funds if they do not wish to obey the new version of the "gag rule." The Planned Parenthood groups' decision about that issue is expected to lead the way for many others.
Planned Parenthood affiliates get about $34 million of the family planning clinic grants that the federal government pays each year - that is, nearly 25 percent of the $136 million annual total in recent years.
Planned Parenthood's largest affiliate, in Wisconsin, is expected to be one of the first to cast aside federal funds. Severa Austin of Milwaukee, that group's executive director, said she would take the issue up with her board of directors next week, but she left no doubt that the decision would be to do without $2.1 million in funds - about 23 percent of its budget.
by CNB