Abortion Clinic

A man accused of trying to bomb a clinic where abortions are performed pleaded guilty in Austin to attempted use of a destructive device. Paul Ross Evans, 27, remained in federal custody awaiting sentencing and faces up to 40 years in prison with the plea agreement. He was indicted on multiple charges and could have been sentenced to life in prison if convicted. Evans was arrested in April after a bomb was found in the parking lot of the Austin Women's Health Center.

FOURTH-year medical student Megan Lederer recently helped deliver a premature baby at barely six months gestation. The newborn was tiny, unimaginably fragile, but she survived. Caught up in the moment, Lederer didn't think about the implication for her chosen career. Later, though, she wondered: Could I have aborted that pregnancy? She could have, she decided. She would have felt an obligation.

A bomb was left in a duffel bag in the parking lot of a clinic in Austin where abortions are performed, but a bomb squad safely detonated it. An employee found the package at the Austin Women's Health Center, authorities said. The device "was configured in such a way to cause serious bodily injury or death," said David Carter, assistant chief of the Austin Police Department.

Hundreds of abortion-rights advocates and their opponents squared off in Jackson, both sides proclaiming Mississippi a new battleground state in the fight over Roe vs. Wade. The National Organization for Women and other abortion-rights groups gathered at a park, vowing to counter an eight-day rally by national group Operation Save America, which wants to see the state's only abortion clinic closed.

The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council has impeached the tribe's president for proposing an abortion clinic on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in response to South Dakota's blanket prohibition on abortion. The 9-5 vote by the council removed Cecelia Fire Thunder, who was elected in November 2004 as the tribe's first female president. She said she would challenge the action.

An abortion clinic surrendered its license Wednesday amid allegations that a woman delivered a nearly full-term stillborn baby after a staff member gave her an abortion-inducing drug without a doctor present. Summit Medical Center in Birmingham has been closed since the Alabama Department of Public Health suspended its operations May 17, citing numerous violations of health rules, said Rick Harris, director of the state agency's Bureau of Health Provider Standards.

In a victory for an abortion rights group, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that abortion clinic doctors and other professionals are not required under Kansas law to report underage sex between consenting youths. The ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten was a setback for Kansas Atty. Gen. Phill Kline, an abortion foe.

The leader of the Oglala Sioux Tribe is proposing to establish an abortion clinic on an Indian reservation -- within the reach of women who seek the service, but outside the reach of a new state law that imposes a ban on nearly all abortions. Tribal President Cecelia Fire Thunder, a former nurse, said it was the prohibition on abortions in cases of rape that drew her to speak out. Her tribe is based on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. State Atty. Gen.

South Dakota's ban on nearly all abortions, signed into law Monday, has opened deep rifts within both the antiabortion and the abortion-rights movements, as the two camps struggle to frame the issue to their political advantage. The divisions have turned traditional abortion politics topsy-turvy. Some foes of abortion -- fearful that South Dakota has moved too far, too fast -- now find themselves reluctantly opposing efforts to protect all fetal life from the moment of conception.

The Supreme Court ended a 20-year-old lawsuit against militant antiabortion groups Tuesday, ruling unanimously that their use of "physical violence" outside clinics did not violate anti-racketeering laws. The decision marked the third time this case had been decided by the high court and, this time, the justices made sure it would be the last. The impact of the ruling will be limited, however, because a federal law enacted in 1994 makes it illegal to block entrances to an abortion clinic.