AUGUSTA – As Congress considers a ban on partial-birth abortions, the Maine Legislature will review five abortion-related bills, including one that requires women to wait 24 hours before having the procedure.
The pending legislation at both levels have people on both sides of the abortion debate lobbying hard for their causes.
Although pro-choice advocates in Maine are confident that state lawmakers will reject the pending bills, as they do year after year, the proposal before the U.S. House of Representatives to ban so-called partial birth abortions has fueled their efforts to seek support.
The ban was passed by the Senate earlier this year, and President Bush has already announced his plans to sign it.
“With our opponents moving their agenda forward in Washington, we must act now to protect 30 years of rights,” the Family Planning Association of Maine stated in a recent newsletter asking people to get involved.
Pro-choice advocates say the bills before the state Legislature are part of the nationwide push to make it harder for women to access abortions.
“These five bills are part of a national strategy to restrict abortion,” said Sarah Standiford, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood. “It’s nothing new for sure.”
Those who oppose abortion insist that they are not trying to overturn the 30-year-old Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade.
“We’re simply asking for good medical practice,” said Dick Traynor, executive director of the Maine Right to Life Committee. “To say that we are trying to chip away at Roe vs. Wade is a cheap thing to do.”
The most controversial bill would require a woman to wait a full day to have an abortion after her visit to a clinic.
Supporters of the proposal refer to it as the “informed consent” bill.
Sponsored by Sen. Carolyn Gilman, R-Westbrook, the bill would mandate physicians to provide a woman with specific information, such as the age and development of the fetus and physical and psychological risks associated with abortion, during the initial visit.
The woman would then be required to wait 24 hours before returning for the procedure.
“It’s a bill on information. Knowledge is power,” Traynor said. “I’ve talked to girl after girl who said she was so upset when she went in to have her abortion, that she couldn’t even think. Why shouldn’t they get the full information, then have time to reflect on it?”
But Standiford and other opponents of the bill say women are already being provided with all of the information they need to make responsible choices. Imposing additional waiting periods and mandating counseling assumes that women aren’t capable of making a decision on their own, Standiford argued.
“It treats them like wards of the state,” she added.
Another bill would make abortion reporting forms, including the names of doctors who provide abortions, available to the public. Currently, the physician’s name is blacked out before the forms become public.
Lisa Roche, a lawyer who lives in York and helped draft the bill, said the proposed change would allow women to research the background of abortion providers.
But Standiford argued that the bill would put the lives of the physicians at risk.
“It’s clearly a back-door attempt to intimidate physicians from performing abortions,” she said.
This bill, along with the proposal for the 24-hour waiting period and three others that place further restrictions on abortion doctors and clinics, failed to gain full support from the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, which means they will be forwarded to the Legislature with divided reports.
lchmelecki@sunjournal.com
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