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- <text id=92TT0675>
- <title>
- Mar. 30, 1992: Campaign Notes:Abortion
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Mar. 30, 1992 Country's Big Boom
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 33
- Campaign Notes
- ABORTION
- Loosening the Gag--a Bit
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Now that Republican challenger Pat Buchanan has promised to
- refrain from Bush bashing, the White House can afford to reach
- out to more moderate voters. Among them: pro-choice Republican
- women. That was the political explanation behind the
- Administration's decision last week to allow patients in
- federally financed family-planning clinics to receive abortion
- advice under limited circumstances.
- </p>
- <p> The new guidelines, which were announced by the Department
- of Health and Human Services, would protect the doctor-patient
- relationship in all respects and would permit doctors to refer
- women to facilities that provide abortions. Even under the new
- rules, however, nurses and other medical counselors are still
- prohibited from referring patients to abortion clinics and from
- providing advice to women about the procedure.
- </p>
- <p> By allowing doctors to use their own judgment on whether
- to discuss the abortion option, the Bush Administration is
- trying to dissociate itself from the "gag rule," issued under
- Ronald Reagan in 1988, without offending conservative voters.
- But abortion-rights advocates immediately condemned the new
- rules since most health-care professionals at federally funded
- clinics are not doctors.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-