Supreme Court Abortion Ruling
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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.
SOURCE
My feelings are mixed. The procedure sounds horrible. I am sure the decision to have the procedure is horrible as well. But knowing that the conservative movement pushed for this ban, I fear it could be a first step to outlawing abortions altogether. This would be a very bad move.
Outlawing abortion doesn’t stop it from happening. It just makes it more difficult. Especially for low income women. Wealthy women have always had access to abortions. They could travel to a location where doctors do perform abortions. Or they could persuade *coughbribecough* a doctor that the “health of the mother” clause (which has always been a part of abortion ban law) included their “mental health”. Or they lie and say they were raped.
No, outlawing abortion doesn’t end it, it just puts an additional burden on the poor, who may end up reviving horrible "back-alley abortions" performed with a wire coat hanger, in unsanitary conditions by someone who is not a physician.
Hardly a step forward.
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.
SOURCE
My feelings are mixed. The procedure sounds horrible. I am sure the decision to have the procedure is horrible as well. But knowing that the conservative movement pushed for this ban, I fear it could be a first step to outlawing abortions altogether. This would be a very bad move.
Outlawing abortion doesn’t stop it from happening. It just makes it more difficult. Especially for low income women. Wealthy women have always had access to abortions. They could travel to a location where doctors do perform abortions. Or they could persuade *coughbribecough* a doctor that the “health of the mother” clause (which has always been a part of abortion ban law) included their “mental health”. Or they lie and say they were raped.
No, outlawing abortion doesn’t end it, it just puts an additional burden on the poor, who may end up reviving horrible "back-alley abortions" performed with a wire coat hanger, in unsanitary conditions by someone who is not a physician.
Hardly a step forward.
posted by Marti at 1:03 PM
2 Talk Back
Hardly a step forward
*********************************
Here we go again, Marti.
Just what possible meaningful discussion can begin from the use of the word "forward" as though it was a "Given" that more and more barbaric mass murder is moving forward when actually it's a trip back to barbarism when babies were just smashed against walls, or the damned Romans with their "wolf walls" where infants were just set out for the wolves to get them.
And Christians risked their lives to sneak out and rescue those babies from such horror.
But now it's "forward" as long as it's in a hospital, some money grubbin sub human sticks a suction tube into a little baby's head and sucks out the brains, all the while looking at a LVING HUMAN BEING.
That's forward?
No, and that coat hangar story hangs on year after year when in fact it was a rare thing indeed.
Yes, a girl should be protected from such, but she should also be well aware in this day and age that opening that place of life can result in becoming a Mom.
There are oodles of people seeking to adopt babies.
And no matter how many studies are done to seek to spread the lie that a girl just soon forgets, that is not the case, and that act follows them in their minds all of their lives.
When we did counseling and gave all manner of assist to women who had been through that , I cannot describe the deep cries and gasps of pain that came from deep in their hearts because they knew that they had killed a human being who was a part of them.
Yes, in the age of depravity in which we find ourselves , all manner of perversity is presented as "with it" , but there were reasons for rules, and each of us who break those rules can fool ourselves for a while, but it only drives the pain deeper within and shortens lives from the illnesses which stem from breaking the rules.
I have seen plenty of these things when we worked in a Deliverance Ministry and worked to help these girls and women, many of whom had never seen a real man treat them as they were created to be treated.
Sadly, men have abandoned their responsibility, and girls have been led to believe that "someone will take care of me".
(I deleted a lotta paragraphs here, for while it is good and valuable knowlege, most women cannot admit to it.)
San Francisco, huh?
Been there. Arrived in late '67
OK, Burlingame. My wife is a third generation City of San Francisco lady, but of course doesn't have ANY desire to go there any more. There were romantic things about SF when I was single....Top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel to await the lights on the bay bridge as they sequenced on.
Tadich Grill, the oldest continuous restaurant , with the older waiters wearing those long aprons and telling YOU what you should order.
North Beach for REAL Italian food.
Oh yes, been there, left that.
Marti,
You may have created a sentence by stringing a few words together, built a birdhouse or a bench, but you didn't create a pumpkin a baby or a finch.
Now someone smashing your pumpkins might get you mad. Who do you think gets outraged smashing unborn baby humans let alone a finch?
Georz
Post a Comment
<< Home