030774 cn Court Rules Public Hospitals Must Offer Abortion Services

ST. LOUIS (RNS) - Public hospital facilities must be made available for abortion services, according to a ruling made here by the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a unanimous decision, the court ruled unconstitutional a resolution adopted in 1973 by the city hospital of Virginia, Minn.

That resolution prohibited the use of hospital facilities for performing an abortion unless the pregnancy threatened the life of the mother.

The Minnesota city's resolution had been knocked down by a Minnesota District Court before coming to the Appeals Court here.

Involved in the issue is the January 1972 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court which held that, in the first three months of pregnancy. the physician and his patient should be free to determine whether a pregnancy should be terminated, without interference from the state.

The Court of Appeals here concluded that "while we propose to fashion no specific procedures which must be followed nor to require any individual staff member to participate in abortion procedures, we do hold that the hospital facilities must be made available for abortion services, as they are for other medical procedures, to those physicians and their patients who have a right to and request such facilities."

In a second, somewhat related, ruling, the Federal Appeals Court ruled against a St. Louis City ordinance regulating the operations of private abortion clinics.

The ordinance, which requires detailed records on abortion patients. deprives persons of the "right to privacy within the patient's relationship" with doctors, the Appeals Court said.

It added that the ordinance's provisions are -unduly restrictive of a physician's right to administer his judgment as to an operation that is now established to be within the first trimester (12 weeks) of pregnancy, safer-than childbirth.

The court said that while states and cities may act to insure maximum safety for the patient. the St. Louis ordinance requirements do not "stand up as legitimate and reasonable."

The city abortion control ordinance had been attacked in a suit filed last August by Reproductive Health Services, Inc., major abortion clinic here and a part-time staff physician at the clinic.

Another abortion suit is currently pending in the U.S. Federal District Court, also located here, concerning the City of St. Louis' refusal to allow abortions in its own municipal hospitals. Observers theorized that the Appeals Court ruling on the Minnesota case was virtually identical to the pending St. Louis municipal hospital case.