Challenges Ahead

State Legislation

"PEOPLE ARE TIRED OF THE KILLING"

By Dave Andrusko

Few people are better equipped to assess how much progress the pro-life movement has made in the state legislatures in the decade of the 1990s and predict where we are likely to make our next inroads in the year 2000 and beyond than Mary Spaulding Balch. In a word, Balch, director of state legislation for National Right to Life, is bullish about prospects for the Movement.

"Frankly, I think people are tired of the killing," she told NRL News. "Abortion is sold as a 'solution' and, fortunately, fewer and fewer people are buying it." Balch added, "With upwards of 40 million abortions since 1973, few lives have gone unscathed."

Balch's optimism is not some pollyannaish wish fulfillment. It is an assessment based on her 27 years in the Movement, her 19 years experience as a lawyer, several years as a congressional staffer, and especially her 10 years at NRLC, which has given her an unparalleled position from which to observe and to influence what happens in the state legislatures.

Balch is quick to credit the controversy over partial-birth abortion with seriously rerouting the debate. "Pro-abortionists win when they are able to airbrush the unborn child out of the picture," she said. "The cause of women and their unborn children prevails when we are able to persuade the public [and legislators] that a pregnancy involves both a mother and a child."

As hard as it is for pro-lifers to believe that this could be true, the 27 years after Roe v. Wade, the greatest impact of the dispute over partial-birth abortion for most people has been to define what an abortion is.

"When the average citizen learns even a little about partial- birth abortion, the lesson is immediate and striking: someone dies in an abortion," Balch said. For countless millions of people this is "new information that has finally reached the level where they are consciously aware of it."

And the impact has been extraordinary. "Anyone who argues that legislation does not educate and pave the way for further gains has simply not followed the debate," she added.
As of December, 27 states have passed bills banning partial- birth abortion. Seven of these laws have not been challenged. Virginia's law is in effect pending review by the 4th Circuit. Another four circuit courts of appeal - - the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th - - are in the midst of reviewing four partial-birth abortion statutes.

Most significantly, in November the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Wisconsin's and Illinois's ban on partial birth abortions - - the opposite conclusion reached the month before by the 8th Circuit, which overturned the bans enacted by Nebraska, Iowa, and Arkansas. The odds are good that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide to review the issue, given the conflict between circuit courts of appeal.

"Partial-birth abortion has become to a defining issue in two senses," Balch explained. "It defines what happens to the baby in an abortion but it also defines for many people a point at which their already reluctant support for abortion ends."

In the first years of the new millennium Balch sees the Movement building on the breakthrough established by the debate over partial-birth abortion and other pro-life successes.

For example, she believes the time may soon be ripe for another look at the question of fetal pain. "If the public now understands that someone is killed in an abortion, it's not a very large leap forward to grasp that at some point in pregnancy, the unborn will be able to experience pain during a process that tears her body apart," Balch said.

In another important area, she said she was greatly encouraged by Circuit Court Judge Byron Kinder's November 16 decision. Judge Kinder upheld a Missouri law that said that Planned Parenthood is ineligible to receive state family planning funds because it fails to adequately separate its family planning operations from its provision of abortion and abortion referrals.
"The law is very detailed and very specific," Balch said. "The Missouri legislature made it very clear that it intended to remove not some state subsidies of abortion services but all of themdirect and indirect."

Balch also hailed legislation at the federal level that for the first time recognizes unborn children as crime victims for federal law enforcement purposes. Under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, if someone injures or kills an unborn child while committing a violent federal crime against a pregnant woman, the assailant will be charged with a separate offense on behalf of the unborn child. Many states already recognize the unborn child in this context. Others are expected to follow.

Parental Involvement/Women's Right to Know
In the coming years Balch also expects more states to pass two measures which enjoy widespread popular support.

Parental involvement laws have already made it through the legislative labyrinth in 34 states. Twenty-four are currently in effect. The Texas parental notification law will go into effect in January 2000. In addition, 15 states have added a women's right to know measure to their statutes, three of which are enjoined.

"For the most part these laws are a result of what the Supreme Court said in its 1979 Bellotti decision, its 1989 Webster decision, and its 1992 Casey decision," she said. Cumulatively, these cases upheld the core of Roe v. Wade, but did allow states to enact some forms of protective legislation that save lives, Balch said.

Other laws that have appeal for legislators are measures to require abortion clinics to report on their business and, increasingly, measures to fund alternatives to abortion.

Balch said pro-lifers should be "greatly encouraged" at the progress made to date but also understand that passing legislation is "a slow process, often tedious, and always difficult."

And that is no accident, she explained, for the process is very deliberative with many steps along the way. Failure at any one of these stages can be the death knell to any legislation.

"But when you add that the topic is abortion to the harsh reality that the legislative process is geared to kill most bills, you quickly see why sometimes it takes a decade to pass even a law that is very popular, such as parental notice," she said. Partial- birth abortion bills are the exception that proves the rule.

Balch concluded her interview with NRL News by repeating her optimism. "We will continue to make headway because unrestricted abortion on demand has never been popular," she said.

Moreover, Balch added, pro-life legislation such as women's right to know crosses traditional pro-life/pro-abortion lines both because it only makes sense for the "consumer" to know what it is she is "buying," and because such laws illustrate that pro-lifers are very concerned about women as well as their unborn children.

These laws typically have three parts. The first section requires that women contemplating abortion be provided with scientifically accurate, unbiased information about the development of their unborn child.

The second section informs women about the relative risks, both physical and psychological, of abortion versus childbirth. With only a few exceptions, this is new information to women who to that point are completely in the dark. The third sections outlines alternatives.

As the reign of Roe reaches its 27th year, the long-term impact of abortion will become more and more obvious to more and more women.

"Often it's when the kids go off to college that women start to think about kids who aren't there," Balch said. "This triggers in many women memories of the children who will never return home-- their aborted children."