Page 6
NEWS
Monday,]
THE BATTALION
Courts granting waivers
to consent for abortion
f Listen
forjbetails c
city rTianc
NEW YORK (AP) — Invariably, these courthouse dramas
play out in secret. An anxious teen-ager explains how her life
has been turned upside down. A judge then rules on the girl's
request to have an abortion without her parents' knowledge.
The request is granted routinely in some states. In others,
the girls are commonly rebuffed. Almost always, say attor
neys who have participated, the experience is wrenching.
"There's a terrible sense of apprehension, a sense of pow
erlessness," said Shoshanna Ehrlich, a Boston-based law
professor. "A sense that their lives were being given over to
some stranger who had an amazing power over their future
— a sense of being violated."
No one on either side of America's unending abortion
debate is enthusiastic about these confidential hearings. Yet
they are likely to become more frequent, not less, as more
states pass laws requiring parental consent or notification
before an unmarried girl under 18 can have an abortion.
There are now 31 states
that enforce such laws, up
from ,18 in 1991. Ten other
states have passed similar
laws but are temporarily
barred by a court or attorney
general from enforcing them.
Under U.S. Supreme
Court guidelines, states that
adopt parental-involvement
laws should provide an op
tion for a. girl to request a
waiver. The result is the so-
called judicial bypass — a
process so divisive that it
66 *
‘[fudges are] supposed to
follow the facts. For a politi
cal party to say, 'The hell
with that. We want you to
follow our platform regard
less' — that's a problem”
The Houston lawyer who won the waiver in the first
Texas case was astonished by that threat.
"You're talking about judges here," said Collyn Peddie.
"They're supposed to follow the facts. For a political party
to say, 'The hell with that. We want you to follow our plat
form regardless' — that's a problem."
In the view of anti-abortion groups, the most wanton
granting of bypasses takes place in Massachusetts, where
girls routinely obtain waivers to a 20-year-old parental
consent law.
Abortion rights activists have organized a network of
volunteer lawyers ready to represent pregnant girls on short
notice. The network steers girls toward sympathetic judges
and seeks to ensure that bypass hearings are held swiftly.
More than 15,000 Massachusetts girls have sought a by
pass since 1981, and nearly all have succeeded, said Jamie
Ann Sabino, the lawyer who set up the network. Usually,
they only need to demon
strate they are mature enough
to make their own decision.
"Look at what the young
woman has gone through to
get to that point," Sabino
said. "She's called a lawyer,
she's figured out how to get
out of school, she's willing to
come in and tell a stranger
the most intimate details of
her life. Virtually all the
young women who do that
are mature."
— Collyn Peddie
Houston lawyer
sparked bitter infighting this year within the all-Republi-
can ranks of the Texas Supreme Court.
Dealing with a new parental-notification law, the Texas
court stunned anti-abortion groups in March by overruling
a lower court and allowing a 17-year-old girl to have an
abortion without telling her parents.
Justice Nathan Hecht, in an angry dissent, called the ma
jority opinion an insult to legislators who favored parental
involvement. Two justices retorted that Hecht failed to set
aside personal anti-abortion views — "his passion over
comes reasoned discussion."
The Texas high court later ruled against two young
women seeking waivers, and advocacy groups on both
sides are now cautious in predicting how the law will be im
plemented. The state Republican Party, in its platform
adopted in June, bluntly warned judges it would seek their
defeat if they "nullify the Parental Notification Law by wan
tonly granting bypasses."
In some states, girls confront starkly different circum
stances. Indiana, Louisiana and Mississippi, among oth
ers, are considered largely hostile to bypasses. Judges
sometimes require a girl to receive anti-abortion counsel
ing or refuse to hear a case promptly, raising the risk of a
late-term abortion.
In such states, a pregnant teen determined to avoid
parental notice may have to choose either a trip to anoth
er state, an illegal abortion or a hearing before an unsym
pathetic judge.
A bill pending in the U.S. Senate would make it a crime
for any adult to drive a pregnant teen across state lines to
circumvent a parental-involvement law.
Nationwide, there are about 900,000 teen pregnancies a
year, and roughly one-third of those are aborted. Both the
teen pregnancy and teen abortion rates have dropped
steadily over the past decade, but they remain higher than
in most developed countries.
Apart
fire-sa
STUART VILLANUEVA/THtHmnv
James Taylor, a skydiving instructor at the Austin Skydiving Center, bails out from 10,000teet
above Lexington, Texas. Skydivers in free fall from this height reach speeds up to 120 mph be
fore opening their chutes and floating safely to earth.
Bootleggers use hearing-impaired technology to record concerts
NEW YORK (AP) — A system designed to
help the hearing-impaired at concerts has pro
vided bootleggers with a new tool to make ille
gal live recordings of exceptional quality, ac
cording to the record industry.
This latest wrinkle in the multimillion-dollar
bootlegging industry takes advantage of a fed
eral law requiring arenas to offer patrons use of
an assistive listening device (ALD).
"We know through criminal investigations
and informants that this is a common practice,"
said Frank Creighton, senior vice president of
anti-piracy at the Recording Industry Association
of America.
Bootleggers can simply request an ALD head
set, which provides a high-quality feed of a live
show via a low-level EM frequency broadcast in
side a facility.
The music pirates then steal the headset feed,
giving them concert performances devoid of the
usual bootleg problems such as random crowd
noise or distortion, Creighton said.
"The quality is much higher than a typical
bootleg," Creighton continued. "No question
about it."
Bootleggers are using the devices provided
for the hearing-impaired to record near-pristine
versions of concerts by veterans like Bruce
Springsteen and Bob Dylan plus a plethora of
new acts.
"Every major act that's in the Billboard top
100 is getting bootlegged in some manner,"
Creigfiton says.
Advocates for the hearing impaired were ap
palled by the new pirating technique.
"Oh my goodness! What concerns me is if this
becomes so prevalent that the service is
dropped," said Mercy Coogan of Gallaudet Uni-
66
The quality is much
higher than a typical
bootleg. No question
about it.”
— Frank Creighton
senior vice president of anti-piracy at the
Recording Industry Association of America
versify, the Washington, D.C.-based college for
deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
"That could prohibit a whole lot of hard of
hearing people from this very important mode
of access."
Arenas are required to provide the ALDs un
der the federal Americans with Disability Act,
which marked its 10th anniversary Wednesday.
Typical of the ALD bootlegs is an Aug. 22,
1999, Springsteen concert from Boston's Fleet
Center — one of the most popular illegal record
ings of the Boss' E Street Band reunion tour, ac
cording to Internet sites.
The three-CD collection is advertised as
"soundboard quality," with various mentions
that it was done via an ALD.
"If there (is) anybody who don't own a single
boot, buy this," raved one bootleg buyer at a
Springsteen site. "The sound is so good you'll
think it's an official release!!!"
The ALD rip-offs were news to officials at sev
eral major concert venues from coast to coast,
eluding the new Staples Center inLosAngele ' aun dry loom
and the First Union Center in Philadelphia. buildin § was evac
"We have the devices, but I haven't heard« ordt ' 1 ^ basbaon a
this," said Ike Williams of the First UnitedCet| down alarm wai
ter in Philadelphia.
Creighton says that arena policing is genenl
ly left up to bands and their road crews;
groups, from the Allman Brothers to the Dan
Matthews Band, have encouraged their fansll““ u ol ! tll ' L 1 c , vv , 11
, , ,. , ° f :rom the sprinkler
tape and trade live performances.
The Recording Industry Association of Art'
ica only becomes involved once the illegal mat
rial is manufactured and distributed, accordil
to Creighton. The association says that hundred
of millions of dollars are lost annually throun
the various forms of bootlegging and this®
technique should add to that total.
Chris Ci
The Batti
Early last Sab
ing,the Universil
fire safety systen
the test when a f
the dryer of a
apartment. ' Lis
manager of Uni\
mens Apartmer
fire is believed b
rated in the mob
dryer because a 1:
or a butane light
came into direct c
the motor.
The fire was c
and no one was i
ides the actual fi
the rooms on the f
pnd floor directh
ire suffered wal
Colombian rebels besiege police
200 miles
200 km
Rebel group claims
to have attacked a
police station, killing
two dozen officers.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Leftist rebels attacking a
police station in a mountain town claimed to have killed
nearly two dozen officers, and authorities said they
feared the worst Sunday as they struggled to deploy re
inforcements.
Radio transmissions from the be
sieged police officers in the town of
Arboleda were cut on Sunday
morning, about 24 hours after the at
tack began.
The rebels of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, told a local photojournalist
who tried to enter Arboleda that
they had killed 23 police officers.
Police said they could not con
firm the report, but said it was pos
sible that casualties are high among
the 26 officers stationed in Arboleda.
The attack could be the bloodiest
since the United States approved
$1.3 billion in aid to Colombia to bat
tle leftist rebels and other armed
groups involved in narcotics pro
duction. As a rebel offensive heats
Caribbean Sea
COLOMBIA
ECUADOR
PERU
up, there are calls for the aid to be used for anti-guerrilla
missions that are not directly related to drugs.
National police chief Gen. Ernesto Gilibert was at the
airport in the provincial capital, Manizales, coordinating
with the army and air force to get reinforcements to the
town, Gutierrez said.
"We fear the worst," said Police Col. Norberto Pelaez,
the police commander in Caldas province, where Arbole
da is located.
Low cloud cover in the mountainous region was para
lyzing air support operations. The rebels prevented the lo
cal photographer, who was interviewed on national radio,
from entering the town.
Gutierrez said it was unclear if U.S.-
supplied Blackhawk combat helicopters,
which provide security for planes fumi
gating drug-producing coca and poppy
fields, would be used in the fighting in
Arboleda if the weather cleared.
The Blackhawks can be used "to de
fend the police and military forces if they
are under attack in a zone where there
are anti-narcotics activities," Kamman
was quoted as saying in an interview
Saturday with ANCOL, the Colombian
government's news agency.
However, Arboleda is not believed to
be in a coca- or poppy-producing region,
meaning their use to help the besieged
police might violate U.S. policy.
The same issue came up in a similar at
tack mounted by the FARC on July 15 on
News in Brief
“We've
reports c
idents i
denta
starting
Hostages freed in
McDonald’s robbery
VENEZUELA
AP
the southwestern town of Roncesvalles. The rebels besieged
the police station in the town, and after police ran out of am
munition, the rebels allegedly executed 13 of the officers.
Under the new U.S. aid, approved by President Clin
ton on July 13, Washington will provide 60 more heli
copters, including Blackhawks and Hueys, to Colombian
security forces.
GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) —
Three employees were taken
hostage early Sunday during an at
tempted robbery at a McDonald’s
restaurant. One escaped and the
others were freed hours later af
ter the suspects’ fathers talked
the two men into surrendering.
One hostage was shot but was
able to walk out of the restaurant,
and another was sexually as
saulted, said Police Chief Willie
Johnson.
Police received a call at about
6 a.m. that someone was trying to
rob the restaurant, Johnson said.
One hostage escaped about two
hours later, and, at one point,
shots were fired inside the restau
rant, Johnson said.
One suspect surrendered just
after 10 a.m and the second gave
up about 30 minutes later, John
son said. He identified the men as
Michael Sheppard, 20, and Mario
Baldwin, 21, both of Greenville.
Both were arrested.
Johnson said their fathers had
helped police talk them into sur
rendering.
One of the hostages, identified
as Eric Marshall, was in serious
condition Sunday at Greenville
Memorial Hospital, spokesperson
Robyn Zimmerman said. The con
dition of the other hostages was
not immediately available.
California fires
threaten homes
RIDGECREST, Calif. (AP) — A
fire raging in the rugged Sierra
Nevada swept through a tiny com
munity on the remote Kern
Plateau, destroying eight homes
as it swelled to more than 60,000
acres Sunday.
“The last folks in there were
the firefighters and they headed
out just in time to get out of the
fire’s way,” said Kern County Fire
Department spokesperson Chuck
Dickson.
The flames charred pine forest
and brush as they spread from the
Sequoia National Forest, gaining
10,000 acres overnight Saturday
and threatening homes along the
fire line, about 120 miles north of
Los Angeles on Sunday.
Firefighters estimate it will take
nearly two weeks of digging and
burning fire lines to surround it,
and there is no telling how much
the fire will grow in the meantime,
said U.S. Forest Service
spokesperson Geri Adams.
The weather forecast for#
area was for hotter and drierco'
ditions combined with afternoo'
thunderstorms, Adams sail
adding, “That wind won’t help
either.”
The Sierra Nevada blaze# 1
one of about 50 fires burnii?
more than 488,000 acres across
the nation Sunday, the Nation
Fire Information Center reports
In the West, wildfires continued'
burn in Montana, Nevada,
orado, Utah, Idaho,
Washington, Arizona and
Mexico.
About 1,350 firefighters,#
when 1
were coc
but not
becamt
of coni
Can
Heather Kno>
Commons reside
Speech communi'
aid the living ]
the help of nine helicopters $ ipartmentwasdi
four air tankers, were fighting#'
Briarwood A
an and ceiling
blaze, which has cost morettf vithwater,andtl
$3 million, Adams said. Eight# o be restretchec
fighters have been injured since ) 00e d. Knox sai
began July 22.
The fire was contained Sundi:
but damage to roads and
lines are expected to keep# < n ox said. "Aft*
park closed at least two mo' :
weeks.
The blaze was so hot, there
road ties supporting the ste*
guardrails along the park’s v#
ing roads burned, and offici#
worried about erosion on #
charred hills when the first
rain comes.
tnd other person;
vere severely da
“Our place v
leaning crews le
or someone else
inish the cleanin
overcame. There
iamage to the ce
'oommate and I
o move all of t
)ack to its origin;