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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 11, 1993                   TAG: 9308110136
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Short

AMERICAN BAR STANDS TO ABORTION RIGHTS

The American Bar Association voted decisively Tuesday to stick with its strong stand in favor of abortion rights, a stand that has created dissension in its ranks for three years.

Nearly 5,000 members have resigned in protest since the nation's largest organization of lawyers took the abortion-rights stand in February 1990. Led by the State Bar of Texas, opponents of the stand sought to put the issue to a referendum among the group's 370,000 members.

The referendum proposal fell far short of the 266 votes required in the House of Delegates, the ABA's policy-making body, where the vote was 128 in favor of the measure and 313 opposed.

"I would hope that after losing three votes [in the past three years], Tuesday's by a 3-to-1 margin, that opponents of the ABA choice position will give this issue a rest," said Washington lawyer Estelle Rogers, one of the sponsors of the abortion-rights stand.

- The Washington Post

Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by CNB