Supreme Court Delays Abortion Ruling

WASHINGTON--The Supreme Court yesterday prolonged the drama surrounding the fate of legal abortions, postponing until Monday any word in the most closely-watched high court case of the decade.

In a brief and tranquil courtroom session, conducted while scores of partisans waited anxiously outside, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said the court's 1988-89 term will end Monday.

Before beginning their three-month summer recess, the justices must deal with three cases awaiting decision--including a Missouri dispute in which the court's 1973 decision legalizing abortion is under attack.

In each of the three cases, the court must either announce a decision or order the case reargued. If it chooses the latter course, a new round of arguments would be held during the court term that begins October, with an announcement of a decision likely in 1990.

Randall Terry, national director of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, said the delay was frustrating.

"Frankly, I just think they want to get the decision and get out of town," Terry said. "I mean, if I was a Supreme Court justice, I would throw the decision off the airplane as I was leaving the country."

Faye Wattleton, president of Planned Parenthood, said further delay would be "an indication of the turmoil that this court is willing to create in this country."

Court officials refused all comment on the prospect of a Monday decision in the Missouri case, which is called Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services. And in the absence of any hard facts, rumors abounded.

Last night, ABC News reported that unidentified sources told the network that Justice Harry Blackman, author of the 1973 opinion of Roe v. Wade, had requested more time to complete a "bitter" opinion in opposition to one by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But this report did not say which way the court would rule. There was no answer at the home of the court's press officer.

Abortion-rights advocates fear the court will order the Missouri case reargued next term and do so in a way that signals the justices are contemplating a major retreat from the 1973 ruling in Roe. In that decision, the court said women have a constitutional right to abortion.

If reargument is ordered, the court also could agree to review up to three other abortion disputes pending before the justices. That would be read by some as a tip-off the court was on the verge of a sweeping ruling. The three cases--from Illinois, Ohio and Minnesota--all involve state regulations making abortions harder to get.

The justices met behind closed doors in a regularly scheduled conference yesterday after their public session.

Roe itself was a case that had to be argued twice before a decision was announced. The court hears arguments in about 150 cases each term, and since 1977 has held over at least one case each year for reargument the following term.

If Roe were reversed, states would be free to stringently regulate, or even outlaw, abortion.

One of the two other cases in which decisions are pending includes an important church-state dispute from Pittsburgh focusing on holiday displays of a Christmas Nativity scene and a Hanukkah menorah at government buildings.