[Marxism] Supreme Court upholds ban on abortion method -- huge blow to reproductive rights

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

New York Times
April 18, 2007
Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Abortion Procedure 
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:53 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a
controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the
long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed
and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's
constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act ''have not demonstrated that the Act would be
unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases,'' Justice Anthony
Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The administration had defended the law as drawing a bright line between
abortion and infanticide. (However, since the administration holds that
abortion is infanticide, the law actually serves to cloud the distinction
and this was the clear purpose of the campaign against dilation and
extraction. -- FF] Reacting to the ruling, Bush said that it affirms the
progress his administration has made to uphold the ''sanctity of life.''

''I am pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld a law that prohibits the
abhorrent procedure of partial birth abortion,'' he said. ''Today's decision
affirms that the Constitution does not stand in the way of the people's
representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of
America.''

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with
President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice
Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over
how -- not whether -- to perform an abortion.

Abortion rights groups as well as the leading association of obstetricians
and gynecologists have said the procedure sometimes is the safest for a
woman. They also said that such a ruling could threaten most abortions after
12 weeks of pregnancy, although government lawyers and others who favor the
ban said there are alternate, more widely used procedures that remain legal.

The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more
restrictions on abortions.
[snip]

Six federal courts have said the law that was in focus Wednesday is an
impermissible restriction on a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The law bans a method of ending a pregnancy, rather than limiting when an
abortion can be performed.

''Today's decision is alarming,'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in
dissent. She said the ruling ''refuses to take ... seriously'' previous
Supreme Court decisions on abortion.

Ginsburg said the latest 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.''

Ginsburg said that for the first time since the court established a woman's
right to an abortion in 1973, ''the court blesses a prohibition with no
exception safeguarding a woman's health.''

She was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul
Stevens.

The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a
woman's uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion.

Abortion opponents say the law will not reduce the number of abortions
performed because an alternate method -- dismembering the fetus in the
uterus -- is available and, indeed, much more common.

In 2000, the court with key differences in its membership struck down a
state ban on partial-birth abortions. Writing for a 5-4 majority at that
time, Justice Breyer said the law imposed an undue burden on a woman's right
to make an abortion decision.

[snip]
Kennedy's dissent in 2000 was so strong that few court watchers expected him
to take a different view of the current case.

Kennedy acknowledged continuing disagreement about the procedure within the
medical community. In the past, courts have cited that uncertainty as a
reason to allow the disputed procedure.

But Kennedy said, ''The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice
in the course of their medical practice.''

He said the more common abortion method, involving dismemberment, is beyond
the reach of the federal ban.

While the court upheld the law against a broad attack on its
constitutionality, Kennedy said the court could entertain a challenge in
which a doctor found it necessary to perform the banned procedure on a
patient suffering certain medical complications.

Doctors most often refer to the procedure as a dilation and extraction or an
intact dilation and evacuation abortion.

The law allows the procedure to be performed when a woman's life is in
jeopardy.

The cases are Gonzales v. Carhart, 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned
Parenthood, 05-1382.





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