WOMEN NEED FACTS TO HAVE TRUE `CHOICE'

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993                   TAG: 9302100366
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
WOMEN NEED FACTS TO HAVE TRUE `CHOICE'
PLANNED Parenthood's Karen Raschke's remarks (Feb. 1 story, "Abortion foes hope for 24-hour-wait ban") concerning the Women's Right-to-Know bill were offensive, insensitive and insulting to women. Raschke calls women who say they were not given adequate medical information at the time of their abortions liars: "I cannot believe . . . that they did not know at the time what they were doing." Raschke asserts that these women simply should have "asked questions" if they felt they did not have information.
Would Raschke similarly dismiss women who have undergone breast-implant operations and trivialize their concerns about not having been told the risks of silicone leakage?
The point is that patients do not always know the relevant questions to ask. Yet, rather than face up to the abortionist's responsibility of full disclosure, Planned Parenthood shifts the blame to the victims of withheld facts and calls them liars.
Why, in the case of abortion alone, should patients bear the burden of researching potential risks or alternative treatment and presume to have considered all the relevant factors? Raschke would have women poring through medical books, Social Service directories and fetology texts rather than requiring full disclosure at the abortuary. And why? Could it be because if a woman asks a question about fetal development - learning that her unborn child's heart began beating three weeks after conception, or that by 11 weeks her baby's face and all of his/her upper and lower extremities are sensitive to touch - that it just might cause her to choose not to have an abortion?
Similarly, Raschke is concerned that allowing 24 hours for the woman to consider the risks, alternatives or other information would be a "burden" to poor women. Yet, these women are probably the least likely to have had prior access to this vital information. In Virginia, we allow three days to rescind a direct-sale contract. Certainly we should allow a woman a third of that time to ensure that this irrevocable decision is truly her own.
"Choice" is but a political slogan if women are denied relevant information in making the choice to have an abortion. Women do not need to be protected from the medical facts of abortion, information on alternatives, or the untarnished truth about the development of unborn children. Women do, however, deserve to be protected from an abortion industry (Planned Parenthood included) that wants to "protect" them from this information. A Women's Right-to-Know bill should be enacted in Virginia. DONNA B. ROSS MONETA

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB