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and Associates 1117 West 5th Street Austin, Texas 78703 REALTOR”” Representing all types of properties in Austin and Central Texas Interesting & unusual property a specialty. 477-3651 E * 4\( 4\( * # 4\( # # * # # # * 4\( 41 4\( Tired of Texas Hype? SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST 24 Stories from Modern Texas Edited by DON GRAHAM Guaranteed to banish stereotypes and boredom, these twenty-four short stories create a new vision of the Lone Star State with their artistic excellence and narrative mastery. Ably edited and interpreted by U.T.’s own Don Graham, himself a noted Texas writer and critic. Included here are such masters as William Humphrey, William Goyen, Naomi Shihab Nye, Larry McMurtry, Hughes Rudd, Bill Brett, and Carolyn Osborn, among the two dozen authors represented. $9.95 paperback $22.50 hardcover \(Add Sr. so Now in bookstores IgvIU Or order from University of Texas Press BOX 7819 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78713 * * 4\( * * 4\( * 4\( 4\( * 41 4\( * Congressman John Bryant got his MANDATE before the election. Right-to-Lifer Bill Price doesn’t even want to talk about it, although the pregnant teens who don’t become mothers have abortions. An estimated 30,000 of them every year. “That’s not the focus of our movement,” Price said. “We try to stay single issue. Our overriding concern is to stop abortion. Until that problem is .solved, it’s counterproductive to sidetrack [with sex education and birth control].” One of the most curious points in the Texas abortion debate is informedconsent legislation. The idea is to require abortion clinic counselors to tell women about the procedure, about any potential physical risks, and about possible options. When drafted according to U.S. Supreme Court guidelines, informed-consent laws guarantee that women receive basic information that a person should receive before any elective surgery, be it abortion or a facelift. There appears to be a need for this kind of law in Texas. The legislature’s Select Committee found in 1982 that the option of adoption is rarely recommended even when it’s too late to recommend abortion. When you leave out adoption, you get witnesses showing up at the legislature’s biennial abortionbill hearing, saying, “Nobody told me I had any alternatives.” There were at least six last session, claiming to have been denied their right to choose to give their baby its right to life. Both sides have an obvious stake in this one. But informed consent is “difficult to legislate,” according to Bill Price. So informed-consent is not a priority for Texas pro-lifers. TARAL, meanwhile, opposes an informed-consent law mainly because people like Price keep trying to tack their moral agenda onto the bill. “People should have some kind of right to knowledge, but [the right-tolifers] are talking psychological terrorism,” said state Rep. Debra Danburg, an active pro-choice advocate. Danburg said she and other legislators might consider reasonable proposals for abortion regulation, but “we’re afraid to address anything because of the craziness . ” “Everybody’s afraid to approach the subject because they all think they have too much to lose,” said former state Rep. Mary Polk, who chaired the legislature’s Select Committee on Teenage Pregnancy in 1982. “If we were able to sit down and talk, maybe we all would win.” AS IN Wisconsin, where the truce on abortion may have been a flash in the pan. “Nobody influenced any changes in anybody’s philosophical opinions,” said committee member Robert Hintz. “We all came away with the same values.” Judith Selle of Planned Parenthood confided that pro-choice representatives only agreed to the ban on late-term abortions because they believe the U.S. Supreme Court may invalidate the language when it rules on pending cases from Illinois and Pennsylvania. And pro-life hardliners in the state are grumbling about giving state money to school-based health clinics, which they say are reputed to ship kids off to abortion clinics by the truckload. Wisconsin Citizens Concerned for Life includes on its wish list for next session two provisions a no-exceptions parental notification law and a ban on abortions in public hospitals that the committee refused to recommend. The truce was temporary. But, Hintz said, “at least it was a start.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11