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Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning Some Abortions
WASHINGTON - A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the first nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure, restricting abortion rights in a ruling on one of the nation's most divisive and politically charged issues.By a 5-4 vote, the high court rejected two challenges to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003 after its approval by the Republican-led U.S. Congress.
The decision marked the first time the nation's high court has upheld a federal law banning a specific abortion procedure since its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that women have a basic constitutional right to abortion.
In a defeat for abortion rights advocates, the court's conservative majority with two Bush appointees upheld the law adopted after nine years of hearings and debate. The law has never been enforced because of court challenges.
The majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy rejected arguments the law must be struck down because it imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to abortion, it is too vague or too broad and fails to provide an exception for abortions to protect the health of a pregnant woman.
The court's four most liberal members -- Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer -- dissented.
Ginsburg, who called the decision alarming, took the rare step of reading parts of her dissent from the bench.
"In candor, the Partial Birth Abortion Act and the court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives," she said.
The upheld law makes it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion when the "entire fetal head" or "any part of the fetal trunk past the navel" is outside the woman's uterus.
The procedure, which often occurs in the second trimester of pregnancy, is known medically as intact dilation and extraction.
The two cases, widely viewed as the most important of the court's 2006-07 term, had been closely watched as tests of whether Bush's two conservative appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, would restrict abortion rights. Both voted to uphold the law.
Roberts and Alito as U.S. Justice Department lawyers in the 1980s and early 1990s opposed the 1973 abortion ruling. Abortion was a central issue in their Senate confirmation hearings, when neither Roberts nor Alito would divulge how he would vote on abortion cases.
Abortion rights advocates who challenged the law denounced the ruling.
"This ruling flies in the face of 30 years of Supreme Court precedent and the best interest of women's health and safety," said Eve Gartner of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
"Today the court took away an important option for doctors who seek to provide the best and safest care to their patients. This ruling tells women that politicians, not doctors, will make their health care decisions for them," she said.
The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote in 2000 struck down a similar Nebraska law for failing to provide an exception to protect a pregnant woman's health.
But moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who cast the decisive vote in 2000, has retired and was replaced by the more conservative Alito.
© Reuters 2007
10 Comments so far
Show AllWomen will die because of this decision.
f***
This is bad when politicians and lawyers (judges) make life and death medical decisions when they don't know the facts. Jaded Prole is right, women will die over this. Of course, some of those judges consider that there are acceptable levels of deaths, as long as they aren't fetuses. As a nurse, I can think of scenarios where this is a medically necessary procedure to save the life of a mother. This is a purely political and cynical onslaught against women.
Just as the army polishes its boots and presses its uniforms, the purveyors of the greatest violence require a fig leaf to give them a moral claim to high ground where they can grasp it. Right to Life is a fascinating irony in a nation that uses the death penalty, incarcerates a disproportionate share of its population, and spends a fortune on building bombs, bullets, and missiles. How do you suppose the gods regard this mass schizophrenia? If only Americans as the Buddhists advice saw the PRECIOUSNESS of human life, for all races, at all phases... if life were respected, there'd probably be less need for abortion. Push sex in media, make little girls aspire to be as "classy" as Brittany Spears, then make it tough to get birth control or in worst case scenario an abortion. All the talk about funding birth control or family planning, but isn't it true the military counts Viagra as a viable Insurance covered option?
Not all intercourse is consensual. Not all pregnancies are safe.
Don't anybody be fooled about the "morality" issues concocted by our country's self-righteous and hypocritical religious leaders in banning this type of abortion. This court was created to abolish all abortions, if not directly, bit by bit, and they know it.
"Not all intercourse is consensual."
What on Earth does that have to do with late-term abortion? If raped you could get an abortion much much earlier.
It would be refreshing to see such an attitude towards men forced to pay "child" support for a pregancy and birth the father didn't want - THEN it's all about the best interests of the baby huh?
"Not all pregnancies are safe."
Should have kept your pants zipped?
There's always a risk ya know. You play, you pay.
Deal with it.
"Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone"
Well it seems the majority of tHe Supreme Court is without sin,so sometime soon their stones will kill a woman.Now who is playing GOD?
Women have historically had ways to self abort throughout human history. It was only through religious teachings encouraged by governments that women were lesser than man that then spawned laws to against abortion. Those laws were made (and very blatently stated back then) to protect men's property.
Restricting women's access to control her own reproductive ability and health is only a power play. It has nothing to do with God, or preservation of life. Women have a much much MUCH better historical track record at respecting and preserving life than men do.
Look back at all the dictatorships and oppressive governments and you will find the same--oppression of women happened early and first. These moves are always just the first toward ultimately oppressing men as well.
This supreme court decision is really just moving our country one step closer to becoming exactly like that those governments (current and historical) who have horrible human rights records.
Right to Life. So many claim to be followers of this principle. No one should claim that they have respect for life unless they respect ALL LIFE. I believe that no human being has the "right" to take the life of another human being...under ANY circumstances. It is when we start to make exceptions that we encourage the expansion of life-taking (killing). I believe that this supreme court (who, by the way, doesn't have the guts to call war murder) has drawn a line as to when a fetus has become a human being. In the case of partial abortion, I believe they are correct in that assessment. When it comes time to enact laws and statutes, a line must be drawn somewhere. IF the mother's life is endangered by the pregnancy (as determined by a qualified doctor), then an abortion could become a legal procedure. I base this on the fact that other lives are more dependant on the survival of the mother than on the yet-to-be-born infant. A hard choice, at best.
I submit that when society DEMANDS the birth of a child be carried to full term....the society that made the rule to do so is fully RESPONBSIBLE for the welfare of that human being for the rest of its natural life.