Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 1, 1993 TAG: 9302010052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BONNIE V. WINSTON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
ABORTION FOES HOPE FOR 24-HOUR-WAIT LAW
Lori Meetre's story was painfully familiar.She was 18 and in her first semester in college.
She went to the doctor for birth-control pills three days after her period should have started. It was too late. She was pregnant.
Without telling her family, she returned home and had an abortion at Hillcrest Clinic in Norfolk.
Now, a decade later, Meetre, who lives in Chesapeake with her husband and three children, recalls that she "was given no information about the baby that was growing inside of me or the procedure being performed on my body. I was not informed of the risks or potential dangers of this surgery. . . .
"I thought I was just making my period come again - aborting a problem, not a baby," she told reporters last week.
"These people were not helping me by keeping the truth from me. My life was severely traumatized by abortion. I don't believe if I had been informed about the reality of abortion I would have considered having one."
Since 1979, the issue of "informed consent" had been considered closed by activists on both sides of Virginia's abortion debate.
But a ruling last summer by the U.S. Supreme Court in a Pennsylvania case has brought the issue back to Virginia's legislature and others across the country.
In the current session, Del. Stephen Martin, R-Chesterfield, is pushing "women's right to know" legislation to require doctors to tell women 24 hours before an abortion about the medical risks and complications of the procedure.
Physicians also would be required to outline the medical risks of carrying the baby to term and disclose the probable gestational age of the unborn child. And they would have to tell patients that printed materials depicting fetal development are available and medical assistance may be provided if the baby is carried to term.
Abortion-rights activists are particularly incensed about the 24-hour waiting period. They call it a ploy to curb abortions in Virginia, where about 31,500 of the procedures were performed in 1991.
Karen Raschke, government relations counsel for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, said experience with a similar law in Mississippi has shown that a 24-hour waiting period has a "devastating effect" on women. It opens them to two days of harassment by protesters stalking clinics, she charged. Raschke said the law also throws up barriers to poor women who may not be able to afford two days off from work and to rural women who may not be able to get to a clinic for information one day and back the next for their abortion.
Raschke also argued that a Virginia law, enacted in 1979, already requires doctors to obtain a woman's informed, written consent before an abortion.
Current law also states that "the physician shall inform the pregnant woman of the nature of the proposed procedure to be utilized and the risks, in any, in her particular case to her health in terminating or continuing the pregnancy."
Failure may result in the doctor being charged with a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
"The most horrible part of this to me is that it is insulting and degrading to women," Raschke said. "Who are we? Do we not think? Are we passive people upon whom abortion is performed? What do women think when they go to a clinic to get an abortion? They don't want to be pregnant. What are they aborting? They are aborting a fetus.
"I feel very sorry for women who suffer negative emotional outcomes from abortion," she continued. "I cannot believe, however, that they didn't know at the time what they were doing. And I can't believe that they could not have asked questions if they did not have information."
Martin said informed consent is unlikely if a woman doesn't have 24 hours to consider the information she is given about abortion.
"Anything less than 24 hours is not enough time to consider this important matter," said Martin. Last week, he brought to a news conference more than a dozen women, including Meetre, who had undergone abortions and now support his bill. All said they would have avoided abortion if information, including details of the fetus's development, had been given them.
Many claimed the only counseling they received was on the operating table, with their feet in stirrups, when the doctor or nurse asked just before starting the abortion: "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Bonnie Collins, administrator of Hillcrest Clinic, said the clinic has provided extensive counseling and reviews of a three-page consent form before each abortion since she took charge in 1979.
She said Meetre "may have blocked the experience."
Collins said each woman who comes into Hillcrest has "group counseling, where we explain the [abortion] procedure, walk them through it, go over after-care and birth-control methods.
"Then we have individual counseling, which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour and a half," Collins said. "Our role during that time is to make sure they are aware of all of their options."
Collins said fetal development isn't discussed unless the woman asks. A counselor also is present to explain anything a patient doesn't understand on the consent form.
"We also ask them to pay special attention to one paragraph that details the possible complications and risks with the surgery," Collins said.
Martin said last week that his bill is not intended to reduce abortion in Virginia but conceded that it's logical to conclude it might.
"We want to ensure that women considering [abortions] are fully informed about the medical risks of the procedure and are given the opportunity to read about alternatives to abortion, as well as objective, scientifically accurate information about the fetus or unborn child," he said.
Anne B. Kincaid, legislative director of The Family Foundation, an anti-abortion group, said stories like Meetre's "are living proof that the [current] law hasn't worked."
Until last summer's ruling upholding Pennsylvania's waiting period, abortion opponents saw no point in trying to get a similar law passed here, Kincaid said.
"We're going to try it now," she said. "And yes, it may have to be amended some to get passed. But if it's hacked up too badly, we'll just pull it and try again next year."
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1993