Right To Life

Despite speculation that the Supreme Court is ready to reconsider its abortion rulings, the justices Monday refused to give a husband the right to block his wife's decision to have an abortion. The high court action cuts off a novel line of attack by anti-abortion lawyers who contended that prospective fathers had rights equal to mothers in deciding the fate of their "unborn child."

In a victory for pro-choice forces, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that a ban on state-funded abortions for poor women should not go into effect until next spring. The three-judge appeals panel voted 2 to 1 to overturn a ruling by Ingham County Circuit Judge Robert Holmes Bell, who ordered that the voter-initiated law go into effect immediately.

Operators of 25 Southern California anti-abortion counseling centers were ordered Thursday by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to stop providing pregnancy testing as part of their effort to persuade women not to get abortions. The Right to Life League of Southern California, which runs the centers, also was forbidden from advertising in the "clinic" section of telephone books because it is not a licensed medical facility.

The longtime executive director of the state's largest antiabortion group has been charged with a felony after allegedly intercepting e-mail and voice messages from Planned Parenthood of Lincoln, an abortion-services provider. Nebraska Right to Life Director Julie Schmit-Albin, 46, was charged Friday along with former Planned Parenthood employee John F. Keller, 53, with intercepting communications.

Since May, 87-year-old Helen Wanglie has lain unconscious and motionless at the Hennepin County Medical Center here. Although there is no hope for recovery, she is kept alive by a breathing machine, feedings through a stomach tube, and round-the-clock care. In most such cases, physicians and family agree that further care is futile and quietly let the patient die. Not in the Wanglie case.

While Henry Winkler awaits airing of his first TV starring assignment in eight years, anti-abortion activists are gearing up to dissuade advertisers from sponsoring the two-hour CBS docudrama "Absolute Strangers." In the movie, scheduled to air April 14, the former Fonz portrays Martin Klein, a Long Island accountant who went to court in 1989 seeking permission to abort his comatose wife's fetus in order to save her life.

Gov. Cecil D. Andrus vetoed the nation's most restrictive state abortion bill Friday, ending the possibility that the legislation would lead to a U.S. Supreme Court review of the 1973 decision giving women the right to the abortion. The Democratic governor, who has long opposed abortion, said he killed the bill because of concerns that its restrictions were too severe and that it would not withstand constitutional scrutiny.

One side chants: "Right to Life, your name's a lie! You don't care if women die!" The other refers to abortion clinics as "abortuaries" and "death camps." What one side describes as a "fetus" or a "zygote" is a "baby" or sometimes a "pre-born child" to the other. One anti-abortion publication even uses the term "womb resident," while abortion clinics sometimes refer to a "product of conception."

They arrived with their pup tents, their placards and their shared conviction. Before it ended, close to 100 people would come to the small southwest Missouri town of Mt. Vernon for what they said was a single purpose--to save a life. They came from Atlanta, Chicago, Kenosha, and Miami, from St. Louis and Kansas City, just as they crisscrossed the country for Operation Rescue to "stop the killing" at abortion clinics. But this time was different.