STATE LEGISLATION FUTURE BRIGHT.(interview with director of state legislation resembles Mary Spaulding Balch)(Brief Article)(Interview)

When state legislatures are in session, trying to squeeze a half-hour out of Mary Spaulding Balch's hectic schedule for an interview is a formidable challenge. For during those months, NRLC's director of state legislation resembles a whirling dervish, calmly racing from one emergency to another, helping/coaxing/strengthening NRLC affiliates and pro-life legislators as they do battle for unborn children and the medically dependent elderly.

But talk we did one recent Tuesday afternoon, sandwiched between items on her non-stop schedule that included making phone calls, sending out faxes, reading e-mails, and scanning proposed legislation.

Mrs. Balch, who has given the last 29 years of her life to the Movement, is decidedly upbeat. Already in the 2001 legislative cycle Virginia and Arkansas have passed pro-life legislation and other states have had their laws upheld by courts, she said.

"We've got the momentum, that's all there is to it," she told NRL News. "In many states it began last year and has carried over even in states where virtually no pro-life legislation has ever gotten out of committee."

Balch's assessment is mirrored by the gloomy conclusions of NARAL's annual report, "Who Decides? A State-by-State Review of Abortion and Reproductive Rights. The summary that accompanied the report included the following lament from NARAL Legal Director Elizabeth Cavendish:

"We release this report annually and every year the picture gets bleaker and bleaker for women's reproductive rights." Every year, there are more obstacles, more barriers in the path of women seeking to exercise their right to choose. The ultimate goal for anti-choice activists and lawmakers is the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Short of that goal, lawmakers are doing everything in their power to make it more difficult and burdensome for a woman to obtain an abortion."

Balch noted, "You have to take what they say with a grain of salt - - according to NARAL, the sky is always falling - - but they are right that the movement is virtually all in the pro-life direction."