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

DATE: SUNDAY, June 20, 1993                   TAG: 9306220353
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LEGISLATING `SECULAR HEDONISM'

IN THE PAST few weeks, a number of letters have appeared in support of the proposed Freedom of Choice Act, claiming that it is no more than a codification of existing abortion law and a moderate, middle-of-the-road solution to the abortion debate. If this is so, explain why proposed amendments were recently defeated in the House Judiciary Committee that would have allowed, not required, states to keep in place or enact the following exceptions to the law:

A requirement that abortions be performed only by licensed physicians.

An allowance for significant parental notification in the case of minors.

Provision for 24-hour waiting periods.

Permitting meaningful constraints on third-trimester abortions (with the exception of threats to the life of the mother).

These popular, common-sense limitations to unrestricted abortion were defeated. Presuming that the legislation will be signed into law, and given the inevitable court challenges to existing or future state laws, pro-abortion attorneys are certain to argue quite persuasively, and effectively, that Congress' intent was to disallow such statutes.

Someone suggested that abortion has become the primary sacrament in the religion of feminism, or, perhaps more appropriately, that of secular hedonism. In light of the intense radicalization of abortion rights and the high wall of legal protection being erected around access to abortion (this despite both expressed public opinion and good medical and political sense), I suspect that the analogy may be an apt one indeed. JOHN H. LAWLESS JR. ROANOKE

by CNB