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April 23,
2007
VOL.
45, NO. 8Oakland,
CA
Supreme Court upholds partial birth abortion ban
WASHINGTON
(CNS) -- The Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act by
a 5-4 vote April 18.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority opinion in Gonzalez v. Carhart,
said the law’s opponents “have not demonstrated that the act
would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases.”
Also voting in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices
Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Voting in the minority were Justices Paul Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
David Souter and John Paul Stevens.
In her dissenting opinion, Ginsburg said the decision “tolerates,
indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found
necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists.” She added the decision “refuses to take
... seriously” previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion.
Six federal courts had ruled the act had unconstitutionally restricted
a woman’s legal right to an abortion.
In October the Supreme Court accepted cases from California and Nebraska,
appeals of two lower court rulings that found the ban to be unconstitutional.
The court conducted oral arguments in November.
In what the law calls partial-birth abortion, also referred to as an “intact
dilation and extraction,” a live fetus is partially delivered and
an incision is made at the base of the skull, through which the brain
is removed, and then the dead body is delivered the rest of the way.
In the 1990s, Congress had twice passed a ban on partial-birth abortions.
Both times the bills were vetoed by President Bill Clinton.
In 2003, Congress again passed a ban on partial-birth abortions, and the
bill was signed into law by President George W. Bush.
