Supreme Court on "Partial-Birth" Abortions

This is an old post from my now-defunct Myspace blog. I'm going to post some of the older postings in reverse chronological order to put a little meat on the bones of this puppy.

Originally posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban on what some call "partial-birth abortions." The term, by the way, is sheer propaganda. It makes it sound like the fetus is naturally on its way out... it's not. Labor is induced and the fetus is dilated and extracted. It's not the prettiest process since the fetus is late-term and beginning to resemble a baby, but it's not exactly "birth." Regardless of your position on abortion (and even late-term abortions), you should at least be skeptical of anyone using inaccurate language in order to make their case...

In any case, today the Court upheld (in a 5-4 ruling) the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and noted, "The Act is open to a proper as-applied challenge in a discrete case. No as-applied challenge need be brought if the prohibition in the Act threatens a woman's life because the Act already contains a life exception." He also wrote, "There is documented medical disagreement whether the Act's prohibition would ever impose significant health risks on women. ... The question becomes whether the Act can stand when this medical uncertainty persists. The court's precedents instruct that the Act can survive this facial attack."

Justice Ginsburg (the only woman on the Court) wrote for the dissenters. She writes, "Today's decision is alarming. It refuses to take Casey and Stenberg seriously. It 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 continues, "Retreating from prior rulings that abortion restrictions cannot be imposed absent an exception safeguarding a woman's health, the court upholds an Act that surely would not survive under the close scrutiny that previous attended state-decreed limitations on a woman's reproductive services."

Stenberg was a 2000 decision. It held a Nebraska law unconstitutional due its lack of protections for the mother's health. The 2003 federal law speaks to a woman's life. It is interesting that Justice Kennedy speaks only of the "life exception" and says that makes the current law constitutional, whereas Justice Ginsburg correctly reads Stenberg as requiring that any abortion law make exceptions for the mother's health. Oh well, I guess if you're a woman and your health is in severe jeopardy, but it's questionable whether you're going to die, then the doctor has to decide if he will perform the procedure (and risk the punishment: fine or imprisonment up to 2 years) or tell the woman, "Sorry, but a bunch of a white men in Washington tell me I can't touch you." (See this lovely picture of the signing of the law.)