Pro-Life Student Sues School

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 31 — A 14-year-old middle-school student in Florida is suing her school district because her school told her she couldn't hand out pro-life pamphlets at an upcoming pro-life day.

The student and her mother filed the lawsuit in Forth Myers on March 26. It states the district is violating her free-speech rights by not allowing her to hand out the pamphlets April 16, a day pro-lifers have designated a “day of remembrance,” the wire service reported.

The school district's attorney says it has a “blanket policy” against students distributing literature.

Judge: Pro-Life Signs Can Stay

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, April 1 — A federal judge in Riverside, Calif., has ruled in favor of pro-lifers who want to display signs outside an abortion business.

District Judge Robert Timlin said not allowing the group to display their signs is unconstitutional. The stationary signs are about 3 feet tall and 5 feet wide and include a picture of a live baby and an aborted fetus.

City code enforcement officials had confiscated the signs twice, saying they violated the city's sign ordinance, the newspaper reported.

“There is little doubt,” Timlin wrote in his decision, “that [the protesters’] activities — placing large stationary signs on public sidewalks to express their opposition to abortion — are protected under the First Amendment.”

Fewer Abortions in Kansas

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 29 — Women in Kansas had fewer abortions last year than in any other year since 1991.

There were 11,697 abortions in the state last year, 147 fewer than in 2002, according to state Department of Health statistics. Kansas residents accounted for about half of those, 52.7%, with 6,163 abortions. In 1991, 6,070 Kansans had abortions in the state.

Women from other states — mostly Missouri — accounted for 5,534 abortions, or 47.3%, in Kansas in 2003, the wire service reported. Abortions by women age 15 to 19 declined for the fourth year in a row, to 2,005 last year.

Mary Kay Culp, executive director for Kansans for Life, said polls have found more and more young people opposed to abortion.

‘Right to Have a Conscience’

DALLAS MORNING NEWS, March 31 — A pharmacist at a CVS pharmacy in North Richland Hills, Texas, is refusing to fill prescriptions for contraceptives, the third Texas pharmacist to do so in three months.

In January, an Eckard pharmacist refused to fill a “morning-after pill” prescription for a woman identified as a rape victim, the newspaper reported.

The American Pharmacists Association is defending the pharmacist's decision, citing a “pharmacist's right to exercise conscientious refusal,” according to Michael Stewart, a spokesman for the association.

“A pharmacist,” he said, “is like any doctor, nurse or other health-care professional who has a right to have a conscience.”?