Court Won’t Halt Abortion on N.Y. Woman in Coma

New York’s highest court refused Friday to hear an appeal by two anti-abortion activists seeking to block a man from having an abortion performed on his comatose and brain-damaged wife.

The abortion opponents immediately filed a motion for a stay with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, but he turned down their request late Friday. Marshall did not comment on his decision, a court spokesman said from Washington.

“I hope this will finally be the end to this nightmare,” Martin Klein said after the seven judges of the state Court of Appeals, without comment, declined to review a lower court’s ruling making Klein his wife’s guardian.

Nancy Klein, 32, is 17 weeks pregnant. She has been in a coma at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island since a Dec. 13 car accident. Klein, of Upper Brookville, said doctors told him an abortion might save her life. The couple have a 3-year-old daughter.

Doctors late Friday began preparing Nancy Klein for the abortion procedure, and the abortion opponents, John Short and John Broderick, said their lawyers would ask Justice Antonin Scalia to have the full court consider a stay of the operation.

The five-member Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, calling Short and Broderick “absolute strangers,” had ruled Thursday that they “have no place in the midst of this family tragedy.”

Nancy Klein’s parents support her husband’s decision to seek an abortion, officials said.