Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston
Globe
March 1, 2000, Wednesday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: METRO/REGION; Pg. B1
LENGTH: 688 words
HEADLINE:
SENATE RESTRICTS CLINIC PROTESTS HOUSE PANEL OK'S BAN ON
LATE-TERM ABORTION
BYLINE: By Frank
Phillips, GLOBE STAFF, and Hillary Chabot, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
BODY:
After simmering for years on Beacon Hill, the
battle over abortion moved into the open yesterday as the Senate voted to
restrain antiabortion protesters around family planning clinics, and the House
advanced legislation banning a controversial type of late-term
abortion.
Legislative sources said the moves were driven by a
battle between House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, who is strongly against
abortion, and Senate leaders who back abortion rights. By 27 to
12, the Senate passed legislation creating a 25-foot protest-free zone around
abortion clinics, a measure abortion-rights advocates have been pushing for
years.
The abortion-rights groups hailed the vote, which followed four
hours of debate, as a major step in protecting the state's clinics from
violence. The hotly contested bill is, in part, a reaction to the 1994 shootings
at Brookline abortion clinics that left two women dead. But antiabortion forces
scored their own victory when the judiciary committee passed a bill to ban a
late-term abortion procedure in which a fetus is killed in the birth canal and
suctioned out.
The judiciary committee's action on the bill was
unexpected because the panel last spring had voted to send the bill to a study
committee, a move that usually kills legislation indirectly.
Senate
leadership sources said they are convinced that Finneran ordered the judiciary
committee to approve the ban after the Senate decided Monday to take up the
buffer zone bill.
House members outnumber Senate members on the
judiciary panel.
"That was clearly a tweak from Finneran," one senator
said. "Everyone had agreed last spring that it would go into study. No one
wanted to face it."
Finneran late yesterday scoffed at the notion. "No
tweaks intended or delivered," he said. "I have grown beyond tweaks."
John H. Rogers (D-Norwood), the House judiciary chairman, said the panel
pulled the bill out of committee because the rest of his colleagues in the House
wanted to vote on it.
"I think it's important to have a debate on this
issue," Rogers said. "It's a practice that many people in America are opposed
to, and even some abortion-rights advocates oppose it. . . . Most of my
colleagues in the House are in favor of the ban."
Opponents of the bill
say late-term abortions are rarely performed and decisions to undertake them
should be based on medical issues.
Governor Paul Cellucci, a strong
abortion-rights advocate in the past, said he would sign the bill banning
late-term abortions. He also has indicated that he would sign the proposed
buffer zone law.
Finneran, however, would not say whether he would allow
either of the two bills to come up for a vote in the House before the
Legislature adjourns for the year in July. "I never handicap something like
that," he said. "We have stayed away from those things over the last several
years and focused on other issues."
The House leader said he opposes the
buffer zone legislation because it is too broad, and he doubts it will stand up
to federal court scrutiny.
"This would criminalize silent prayer and
peaceful and quiet standing," Finneran said. "And it is clearly aimed at one
particularly activity, not all."
While Finneran said he would confer
with advocates of the buffer zone bill over whether to take it up in the House,
legislative observers say the measure to ban late-term abortion gives the
speaker leverage in dealing with abortion-rights advocates.
The buffer
zone bill has passed the Senate twice in the past, only to die in the House from
lack of action. The Senate took up the bill after the state's Supreme Judicial
Court in January unanimously declared the measure does not violate the state
Constitition.
"The goal of this buffer zone legislation is to protect
the safety of women as they seek access to reproductive health services," Senate
President Thomas F. Birmingham said.
Abortion opponents argued the bill
curbs free speech and the right of assembly.
"If it were really
considering violence, it would have provisions for peaceful protest," said
Maryclare Flynn, executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for Life.
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2000 
