Posted by Phil Lee (208.19.133.132) on February 12, 2001 at 17:29:
Abortion bill was ticking time bomb
Frank A. Defilippo, Baltimore Business Journal, February 27, 1998
It was show time in the State House.
And Carroll County's marplot conservative senator, Republican Larry E. Haines, was the master of ceremonies.
For the third consecutive year he exhumed the signature issue of the GOP's right flank, the so-called partial-birth abortion ban.
A wedge issue for sure, Haines claims he's read the polls and believes there's something blowing in the wind in Maryland. Nothing comes between good friends like good politics.
So Haines' caper was designed to do nothing more than rile up the legislature and win him some election-year cachet in the fundamentalist warrens of Carroll County.
Haines' co-sponsor and fellow mischief-maker is his backbench seat-mate, Carroll County Republican Timothy R. Ferguson, whose admitted motive is to keep the abortion issue high on Maryland's political agenda. But the senate was having none of Haines' election year antics. It effectively killed the bill for this session by sending it back to committee this week.
A little background: Few people favor abortion, but a most support women's abortion rights.
Maryland has been on the pro-choice side of the issue for 25 years, a position that was validated by the voters in a 1992 referendum.
But Haines' bill was loosely worded. It would have banned certain types of late-term abortions without noting that late-term abortions are already prohibited in Maryland except in extreme cases.
The Haines bill was purportedly modeled on legislation passed twice by Congress and vetoed each time by President Clinton. To wit, Gov. Parris N. Glendening has pledged to veto Haines' bill if it gets as far as his desk. This time, it didn't
Haines' previous three attempts to win passage of the partial-birth abortion ban have been blocked in committee. This time, however, eight of 11 members of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee moved the measure to the floor.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, D-Prince George's County, supported the bill -- to no avail.
The partial-birth abortion bill has stirred controversy in Annapolis as well as in Washington because of the nature of the gruesome procedure. In a partial-birth abortion, the fetus is partially delivered, then aborted. However, the procedure is far from routine and rarely performed.
Under Haines' bill, doctors would face two years in jail and a $1,000 fine for violating the law. The Maryland attorney general's office has declared the proposal unconstitutional.
So far, 20 states have passed laws to prohibit partial-birth abortions.
In addition to creating an election-year brawl, the Haines bill carried with it other implications.
For one, supporters of abortion rights wereconcerned that the bill was a first step toward attempting to outlaw abortions altogether. What's more, abortion-rights advocates fear the procedure was abhorrent enough to sway moderate votes against partial-birth abortions, thus re-opening the entire tetchy abortion debate during an election year. Luckily for moderates, it didn't.
As if the legislature doesn't have enough of a perception problem, this kind of a shouting match is just what the beleaguered General Assembly didn't need. Talk about dodging bullets.