From: katefans@chinet.chi.il.us (Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago)
Subject: Remember the woman in a coma....?
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 00:21:10 GMT

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By Siobhan Morrissey
West Palm Beach Post (FL)
August 31, 1992


                 A HEARTFELT ABORTION-RIGHTS PLEA

      A woman whose family got her an abortion while she was 
           comatose says to leave politics out of it.
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Nearly four years ago, the most intimate details of Nancy Klein's
life became public without her knowledge.  As Klein lay in a coma,
her family fought opponents in court over the right for her to get 
an abortion.

Within weeks, an uncomprehending Klein became the focus of a
controversy that escalated to the Supreme Court.  The nation's
top court refused to hear the case.  But her story made the
newspapers, networks, and was turned into a made-for-TV movie
starring Patty Duke and Henry Winkler.

Klein's drama began 12 days before Christmas in 1988 with a 
near-fatal car crash in New York.  She was 2 months pregnant.
A month after the accident, her family argued that she needed
an abortion to save her life.

Klein received an abortion and came out of the coma in March 1989.
Last week from her parent's Delray Beach home, she publicly
assailed abortion opponents.

She urged politicians to keep abortion out of the presidential 
campaign.  "I think it is not up to other people," Klein said
in slow, slightly slurred speech. "It's your own decision."

Klein spoke out against government meddling in such a personal
matter a few days after addressing a letter to the editor of
_The Palm Beach Post_ on the same issue.

"It seems ridiculous that in this day and age abortion is an
issue," she said in her three-paragraph letter, published Aug. 22.
"Let us not elect an individual who wants to dictate what women
can and cannot do with their bodies."

Katie Mahoney, a spokewoman for Operation Rescue, whose members
wanted to chain themselves to Klein's hospital bed to thwart her
abortion, compared the issue to slavery.  "It has to be a campaign
issue, not because it is a political issue, but because it is a 
human rights issue," Mahoney said. "Slavery divided the nation,
just like abortion is doing.  It superseeded politics.  It was an
issue of somebody's body being owned by another person."

Her husband, Pat Mahoney, sits in a Houston jail for for protesting
in front of a women's clinic during the National Republican Convrention
in mid-August.

Yet the Republicans side with Mahoney and have made opposition of
abortion a plank in the party platform.

Frederick Zusselman, Nancy Klein's father, was a resolute Republican--
until the day his daughter needed an abortion to save her life.  "It
made us politically aware and made us active Democrats," Zusselman
said of the experience with the abortion foes who had asked to be
named Klain's guardians so they could prevent her aboriton.

The legal fight went on for weeks.  His daughter was 17 weeks 
pregnant when the last challenge was dismissed.  Doctors at North 
Shore University Hospital on Long Island performed the abortion 
Feb. 11, 1989.  The following month Klein awoke from her coma.

"To me, the outrage was, 'Who are they to declare that they know
better than us what Nancy wanted?'" Zusselman said.

Zusselman, a former chemistry teacher from Long Island, maintains
abortion is a personal matter that should be left up to the woman--
or in the case of his daughter, the woman's family.  Zusselman
chastises Republicans such as President Bush and Vice President
Dan Quayle.

Hundreds of people wrote to Zusselman and his family during their
legal ordeal.  Most supported them in their decision, he said.
Letters arrived from nuns in a convent, an inmate in a New Jersey
prison and a faith healer from Indonesia.  One fellow wrote to
Martin Klein, Nancy's husband, in green crayon and enclosed a $5 bill.
"Marty, you done good," the man wrote. "Have a drink on me."

The Kleins are separated, and Nancy Klein is busy rebuilding her life.
At the time of the accident, Klein was a 32-year-old working mother
with a 3-year-old daughter.  A graduate of Cornell University and 
the Fashion Institute of Technology, she became a free-lance artist 
for such big-name designers as Adrienne Vittadini and Paul Alexender.
Now she hopes to resume her fabric artistry by using design programs
on a home computer, Klein's mother, Anne Zusselman said.

Before the accident, which caused massive head injuries and left 
her right arm partially paralyzed, Klein says she never gave abortion
much thought.  But she bridles at the mention of the people who
wanted to decide her fate while she was unconscious. 

"It was not their business," she said. "They were not involved."

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Vickie    katefans@chinet.chi.il.us

Anti-abortion, Pro-adoption, Pro-birth control, Pro-sex education, Pro-life
                  Feminist for (the rest of my) Life

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