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The high-profile battle over abortion is not the first time for Maryland voters

When Marylanders go to the polls on Tuesday to decide the future of abortion rights in the state, it won't be the first time.

More than 30 years ago, when it looked like Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling recognizing a right to abortion was in danger of being overturned, the General Assembly passed a law codifying Roe's protections. That bill was put to a referendum by abortion opponents in 1992, ending a two-year battle that began with an exhausting and emotional filibuster that halted business in the Senate for eight days in 1990.

“It was a very difficult and emotional time in the Senate,” said Phillip C. Jimeno, then a Democratic senator from Anne Arundel County. He was among 16 senators, most of them Democrats, who used the filibuster to block the bill liberalizing abortion laws.

“It wasn’t a partisan issue, it was philosophical,” Jimeno said recently.

Paula Hollinger, then a Democratic senator from Baltimore County, sponsored legislation codifying Roe in 1990.

“Unlike most political debates, which often fell along party lines, there were Irish Catholic Democrats who were strongly anti-abortion, while some Republicans were pro-abortion,” said Hollinger, who was a trained nurse.

Then-Senator. Paula Hollinger (D-Baltimore County) appeared on a C-SPAN show in 1992 to talk about abortion rights. Screenshot from C-SPAN.

Emotions ran high. Hollinger remembers one morning when she discovered that someone had placed small plastic fetuses on the desks of pro-choice senators. She said whoever was responsible was never identified.

Jimeno said opponents introduced several amendments, including one he wrote that would have “required parental consent before allowing underage girls to have an abortion,” but most of the amendments were rejected by the majority, which did not seek a filibuster.

After debating the abortion issue, Jimeno said senators resorted to reading phone books, bus schedules and just about anything else to maintain the filibuster.

“We had voters bringing food to Annapolis and praying on the Senate floor to support us,” he said. The marathon sessions often lasted until 2 a.m. and then resumed the next morning.

Years later, Senate President Mike Miller told reporters the filibuster was “ugly.” People (abortion opponents) talked about the Holocaust.”

Miller, who died in 2021, found himself in the middle of controversy as Senate president in 1990. While he personally opposed abortion, he spent days and nights begging his anti-abortion colleagues to end the marathon debate, which resulted in a complete shutdown of other legislative business.

Finally, on the eighth day, Miller convinced enough senators to formally end the extended debate to end the filibuster. The Senate finally passed a compromise abortion bill this session, but the House failed to pass it.

The following year, the General Assembly quickly passed a law guaranteeing the right to abortion until the fetus is viable, which is usually about 24 weeks. Within an hour of passage, the bill was signed by then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer.

Abortion opponents were undeterred. Led by former Lieutenant Governor Samuel W. Bogley III, they launched a successful petition drive that put the issue on the ballot for voters to decide in 1992. Bogley served only one term as Gov. Harry Hughes' lieutenant governor: Hughes, who supported abortion rights, removed Bogley from the ticket in the second term.

Political advertisements on both sides could be heard on the radio weeks before the election. In a television commercial sponsored by an anti-abortion group, Dr. Ben Carson, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon who decades later would enter national politics as a Republican presidential candidate.

On Election Day 1992, Maryland voters overwhelmingly approved the referendum question, 62% to 38%.

Some of the Democratic senators who participated in the anti-abortion filibuster were subsequently defeated by abortion rights groups. Among them was three-term Senator Francis

The 16 Maryland senators, most of them Democrats, who passed an abortion law in 1990, a precursor to a 1992 abortion referendum. Photo courtesy of Francis X. Kelly.

Jimino said he wasn't sure the filibustering senators of 1990 would do the same thing today, given how far some states have expanded their abortion restrictions.

“I don't know if any of us would have stood up today to defend the actions of these states when some states passed such restrictive abortion regulations,” he said, pointing to restrictive abortion laws in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and other states. “The problem is that in some cases they (other states) have gone to the extreme of burdening doctors and women have had to leave the state to get abortions.”

Jimeno gives the example of his wife, who had an ectopic pregnancy many years ago.

“Under some of these laws, doctors would have been charged and my wife might not be alive today. That’s what’s restricted in some of these abortion laws,” he said.

This year's abortion debate comes after the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade repealed, but this time it is abortion rights supporters who are putting it on the ballot, not opponents. And this time they are trying to enshrine this protection not only in state law, but also in the state constitution.

Baltimore Archbishop William Lori has urged Catholic voters to vote no on Question 1, the question in this year's contest. Lori's letter said a constitutional amendment would be both unnecessary and harmful “because it would divert resources from the well-being of women, children and families.”

But Delegate Samuel “Sandy” Rosenberg (D-Baltimore City), who has served for more than 40 years, vividly remembers the contentious 1990 debate and the 1992 voter referendum. Rosenberg, a staunch supporter of abortion rights, said, the recognition of reproductive rights in the Maryland Constitution is more consequential.

“The Dobbs decision (which overturned Roe v. Wade) teaches us that this cannot be taken for granted. A constitutional provision protects reproductive freedom more strongly than a law,” Rosenberg said.

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