Subject: Carhart Reinstated to Nebraska University Post
Source: Associated Press; August 23, 2001

Carhart Reinstated to Nebraska University Post

Omaha, NE -- LeRoy Carhart, the abortion practitioner who successfully
challenged Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortions before the U.S.
Supreme Court, was reinstated to his volunteer faculty position Thursday
by the University of Nebraska.

The medical school in Omaha reinstated Carhart after he agreed to drop his
lawsuit against the university. However, it is unclear what, if any,
duties he will have.

Last summer, acting on a lawsuit filed by Carhart in 1997, the U.S.
Supreme Court voted 5-4 to strike down Nebraska's partial-birth abortion
ban.

Carhart sued the university after his dismissal from the school last year.
He alleged the university terminated his position because of political
pressure after the Supreme Court decision and news reports on how he was
supplying fetal tissue from abortions for research at the school.

The university settled the lawsuit because it appeared it would lose if
the case reached trial, said Joe Rowson, university spokesman. UNMC also
agreed to pay $65,000 in legal fees to his lawyers.

Carhart's sole relationship with the school had been to provide fetal
tissue, but the school will not accept any more fetal tissue from him,
Rowson said.

``He has a title,'' Rowson said. ``The practical result of this is that he
will be listed in our telephone directory as a volunteer faculty member.
That's it.''

Carhart, however, said he wants to resume supplying fetal tissue for
research, establish a new chapter of Medical Students for Choice at the
school to promote abortion and offer his Bellevue facility for abortion
training of students.

Rowson said Carhart can't form the pro-abortion student group.

"In no way would he be authorized to do that under his status as a
volunteer faculty member. Nor would any other volunteer faculty member,"
Rowson said. Only permanent faculty can sponsor student organizations, he
said.

One of the pro-life advocates who led criticism of UNMC for giving Carhart
the volunteer faculty position in the first place was Julie Schmit-Albin,
executive director of Nebraska Right to Life.

"I guess they should have known who they were dealing with before they got
into getting aborted babies from him," Schmit-Albin said. "So now it's
kind of come full-circle back to them. They tried to extricate themselves
from this mess public relations-wise, and now they can't separate
themselves from him at all."