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

DATE: MONDAY, June 7, 1993                   TAG: 9306070132
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

`CHOICE' BILL AND THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE

IN 1923, Alice Paul drafted the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would guarantee women the same legal status that men have enjoyed throughout the history of the United States. It remains unratified 70 years later. This drafting was done three years after a long and bitter struggle where the outcome was ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.

Today, women comprise only 10 percent of federally elected lawmakers. And yet this body of mostly men will be the deciding voice on the Freedom of Choice Act now before Congress. At issue here is not the morality of the act of abortion, as some would ask us to believe, but a woman's fundamental right to make difficult choices that affect her entire life. One of the basic premises of our Constitution is the freedom to choose a religion, our legislators and the laws that govern us. Those who would deny women the right to choose are in direct conflict with the most fundamental principle on which our country was founded.

Let the freedom to choose to have a child or not be guaranteed to each woman in this country through education, research and development of better birth-control methods, and through access to abortion. SUSAN PEIRICK SALEM

by CNB