Federal judge: Late-term abortion ban unconstitutional SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A federal judge Tuesday declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional, saying the measure infringes on a woman's right to choose.
The ruling applies to the nation's 900 or so Planned Parenthood clinics and their doctors, who perform roughly half of all abortions in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton's ruling came in one of three lawsuits challenging the legislation President Bush signed last year.
"The act poses an undue burden on a woman's right to choose an abortion," she wrote.
Federal judges in New York and Nebraska also heard challenges to the law earlier this year but have yet to rule.
Bush signed the bill in November, saying "a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth while the law looked the other way."
In the banned procedure -- known as intact dilation and extraction to doctors, but called partial-birth abortion by opponents -- the living fetus is partially removed from the womb, and its skull is punctured or crushed.
Justice Department attorneys argued that the procedure is inhumane, causes pain to the fetus and is never medically necessary.
Abortion proponents, however, argued that a woman's health during an abortion is more important than how the fetus is terminated, and that the banned method is often a safer solution that a conventional abortion, in which the fetus is dismembered in the womb and then removed in pieces.
The measure, which President Clinton had twice vetoed, was seen by abortion rights activists as a fundamental departure from the Supreme Court's precedent in Roe v. Wade. It shifted the debate from a woman's right to choose and focused on the plight of the fetus.
Abortion advocates said the law was the government's first step toward outlawing abortion. Violating the law carries a two-year prison term.
quote:In the banned procedure -- known as intact dilation and extraction to doctors, but called partial-birth abortion by opponents -- the living fetus is partially removed from the womb, and its skull is punctured or crushed.
Justice Department attorneys argued that the procedure is inhumane, causes pain to the fetus and is never medically necessary.
Abortion proponents, however, argued that a woman's health during an abortion is more important than how the fetus is terminated, and that the banned method is often a safer solution that a conventional abortion, in which the fetus is dismembered in the womb and then removed in pieces.
Yikes. I wouldn't want to be forced to make that argument. Interestingly enough, the original humane movement advocated sudden head trauma (madame guillotine) over piecewise mayhem. Maybe this attitude is simply an extension of anti-French sentiment?
Seriously, the whole notion of calling one method of systematic death more "humane" than another is typical political BS that deflects attention away from real issues for shock value alone. In deference to pooka I think it deserves a comparison to the AWB's "omg it looks scary" provisions.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Question: How late can you get an abortion in the US?
In Norway it's illegal to have an abortion after the 12th week after conception, but it's possible to get an abortion up to the 16th week in extreme cases.
[ June 02, 2004, 06:13 AM: Message edited by: St. Yogi ]
Posts: 739 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
A couple things-- the judge's ruling only affects doctors employed by Planned Parenthood, and only those doctors in CA. In addition, the city of San Francisco is prohibited from enforcing the ban. (This is my understanding of the report from NPR yesterday)
The late-term abortion ban is being challenged in Nebraska and NY as well. Everyone expects this to go to the Supreme Court.
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posted
Yogi: there is no federal limit, and most state regulations have been struck down in the last couple decades. There are more than a few places where you could probably get away with aborting a baby if the mother allowed you to stick it back up there for formality's sake.
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quote:The ruling applies to the nation's 900 or so Planned Parenthood clinics and their doctors, who perform roughly half of all abortions in the United States.
Scott, are you sure this is only a CA ruling? I was under the impression that this was a *federal* ruling.
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posted
It's one of the most boneheaded rulings I've seen in a while, actually. That a judge would actually refer to a "right to choose" merely indicates that the judge has, in fact, very little understanding of what constitutes a legal right. (By doing this, too, the judge has played into the hands of those who will argue with increasing potency for an actual constitutional amendment.)
posted
I'm actually not sure, Kasie. The information I posted was what I'd heard on NPR, and they very specifically stated that the ruling only applied to CA.
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------------------------------------------------- CBS/AP) A federal judge has declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act to be unconstitutional, saying the measure infringes on a woman's right to choose.
The ruling applies to the nation's 900 or so Planned Parenthood clinics and their doctors, who perform roughly half of all abortions in the United States. --------------------------------------------------Quoted from CNN Today
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Refraining from making political or moral statements Refraining from making political or moral statements Refraining from making political or moral statements. Oh well I tired. What's next, torture of teen-agers? Yeah I'm really kinda wondering which part of my country's constitution that I've spent maybe a dozen or so hours reading and re-reading it says that it's a woman's right to choose to kill without justification or explanation a near developed human life just because it happens to be inside of her. Truth to tell, I don't know what in the constitution even gives the pro-choice folks a constitutional leg to stand on, even a distorted one. Which ammendment did that (ahem)lady, think she was talking about, anybody? Honestly I don't know. #5 maybe? That'd be really pretty screwy judging by how it reads but...
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posted
"The measure, which President Clinton had twice vetoed, was seen by abortion rights activists as a fundamental departure from the Supreme Court's precedent in Roe v. Wade. It shifted the debate from a woman's right to choose and focused on the plight of the fetus."
Um, yes. That's really the whole point of the Supreme Court's division of pregnancy into three stages (formerly coinciding with the three trimesters). In the third stage, the state's interest in the life of the fetus takes precedence over almost any right of privacy of the mother. Therefore, there is no departure from the Roe v. Wade precedent. What a crock.
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quote:Scott, are you sure this is only a CA ruling? I was under the impression that this was a *federal* ruling.
It's a federal ruling that only applies to the plaintiff's in this case. Once it's ruled on by the appeals court, that decision will be binding within the Circuit (9th, I think) that oversees California. Other Circuit Courts are perfectly free to reach their own conclusion until the Supreme Court settles the issue. Rulings from other circuits can be cited as "persuasive authority," but are not binding.
Circuit conflict is one of the prime reasons the Supreme Court will hear a case, but it's no guarantee. They will hear this one, however, once the other two courts rule. I'd bet a lot of money on it.
But no, this ruling is not binding on any other court in this nation except state courts within this court's district.
posted
Unless I need another course in American Government, which is certainly possible, I'm pretty sure a court ruling can only apply to the areas under its jurisdiction.
As far as slippery slopes go, "...whenever somebody starts warning you about the 'slippery slope,' you can be sure of this: They are defending an extremist position, and the only way they can persuade people not to return to the middle ground is by pretending that the opposite extreme is the only alternative."-OSC
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posted
Ok, I have to say that I am pro-choice. However, I'm not sure why anyone would support this kind of late-term abortion. I know, I know, that seems kinda backwards since I'm pro-choice, but it's just my personal thingy. What are the reasons that women get an abortion this late? Are most of them done for medical reasons, or what?
posted
The major problem with this bill is that there are *no* provisions for the life of the woman. The right to choose becomes more than just a choice between pregnancy and non-pregnancy; it because a choice between your own life and your child's. I'm still sorting out how I feel about this particular aspect of abortion, but I do think it's crucial that there be a provision for the health/life of the woman. If a mother faces death by carrying the baby to term, I believe she should be able to choose to abort.
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I totally agree, Kasie. I'm shocked that there is no provision such as the one you mentioned. I'm sure it would be a horrible choice to have to make, but I'd rather have a late-term abortion if it meant dying and leaving my 2 older children without a mother.
posted
"The major problem with this bill is that there are *no* provisions for the life of the woman."
I'm reasonably sure that, during the testimony about this bill, numerous doctors testified that partial-birth abortion as a procedure was never in fact necessary to save the life of a mother. And, IIRC, no pro-partial-birth people brought anyone in to testify otherwise.
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posted
Good point. That makes me wonder. Fetuses are getting viable earlier and earlier. If a mother's life was in danger, couldn't they just take the baby early?
posted
If saving the mother's life is the goal, then yes, they could. But I think a "health" clause would be invoked to justify an elective late term abortion.
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Currently, psychological effects can be considered as part of the health of the mother, so there is no legal impediment to pretty much any late term abortion right now.
quote:If a mother faces death by carrying the baby to term, I believe she should be able to choose to abort.
Why? I ask the question in reference to the vaccuum-the-brains-out while literally still kicking procedure. In those procedures, by what basis-aside from the sovereignty of a woman's right to choose-do you hold this belief?
Which actually begs another question, which Tom brought up too. In the case of partial-birth abortions, just what are the health-risks to women? I'm no expert, but it seems to me that at that late stage of the issue, there are basically two choices.
One is to attempt to deliver the baby. The second is to partially deliver the baby, and kill (or murder, YMMV) it before completion, and then dispose of the remains (or corpse, YMMV). So my question is, has there ever been any evidence that there are health benefits for the mother by pausing the delivery, killing the 'specimen', and disposing vs. going through with it as best you can?
I just don't see how making a choice for termination is going to improve the mother's chance for survival. In fact, it seems to me that leaving the 'specimen' lodged in there while it is being destroyed might pose all sorts of health risks of its own, vs. getting it outta there ASAP.
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posted
Why should the mother's health be an issue at all? The outcome that is being sought by a portion of this nation is to give the rights of the fetus (at any age, not just during late-term abortions) the same rights as the mother. Both have a right to live, correct? Why not the reverse? What if the mother's health is a risk to the child's health, would we kill the mother, take the fetus out and do our best to make sure it survives (as we do with any prematurely born child?).
I am not trying to be facetious, but it only seems like the question of the mother's life occurs if there is proven risk otherwise it seems like the Fed and State governments are to make the decisions.
The real slippery slope is drawing a line in the sand. It is easy to start at either end...a nine month old fetus is no longer a fetus but a baby that can live outside the womb. A 1 day old fertilized egg is not. Do we draw lines in the sand and live with them (as it seems other countries do) or do we just say from the moment a woman is pregnant, life decisions are made from without? Or conversely, until the baby leaves the womb whatever happens to it is the choice of the mother.
I don't want to argue a slipperly slope argument, but in this issue, will there ever be acceptable middle ground? The Late term Abortion is the weakest link in the pro-choice movement because it is a horrid procedure that you won't find anyone really advocating for publicly ("I had a LTA and it tickled!") other than to say that to get rid of it opens the door for more breaks in the wall.
posted
Dag has hit on the reason pro-life advocates are reluctant to allow for "health" provisions as opposed to "survival" provisions, by the way. We're concerned that "health of the mother" will be interpreted so broadly as to allow abortions in virtually any circumstance.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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The reason that I can justify the Big Three Exceptions to my pro-life stance (rape, incest, life of the mother) stems from one of my main arguments against abortion — that human beings do not have an inalienable right to be free from the consequences of their actions.
Though most people in this country do not have sex for the specific purpose of having children, we'd be pretty stupid to pretend that the two were not linked. Sex is the first stage in the human reproductive process, and if you're having sex, you had better expect that at some point or another, babies might happen as a result.
To me, it seems as though the pro-choice lobby is saying that women have an inalienable right to make careless choices, and then get out of the consequences of those choices.
But that's not how it works in the real world. Around here, bad things happen to people all the time because of their stupid choices. One guy overeats and never exercises, and he gets fat. Another guy screws around at work, and he gets fired. Yet another guy gets a woman pregnant, and he pays child support for the next eighteen years.
Yet pregnant women alone need to have the right to escape the consequences of their actions? Come on. When you have sex, you are doing far more than just having a good time. You are potentially creating a life. To turn around and say, oh wait, I didn't really want that to happen, and then to END that life that YOU made ... it's just unconscionable to me.
Rape, incest, and the threat of death are special cases for me, though, specifically because they involve things that an expecting mother really doesn't sign on for. In the first two cases, the mother wasn't the one making the decision to create this life. She didn't ask for the responsibility, and it would not be fair to hold her to the consequences of an act that was cruelly inflicted upon her.
And while pregnancy is part and parcel of the human reproductive process, and should be expected by any sexually active person with an IQ over 70, imminent death is not. No one should expect to die as a result of having responsible sex. So when that issue is unexpectedly added into the mix, and someone's death is virtually inevitable, then it becomes not a matter of convenience, but really, a matter of triage. Again in this case, the woman is subject to a consequence that she should not have predicted, and didn't sign on for, so she should have the choice.
But compared to these tragic cases, the most common reason for an abortion that I'm aware of ("Oh no! If I have a baby right now, it will RUIN my LIFE!") really sounds like childish whining ("I just wanted to PLAY with my toys, I didn't want to put them AWAY! Waaa!"). Yes, the issue is bigger, and the hardship can be very real for some. But I'd really like to live in a place where people are actually expected to step up and accept the consequences of their choices, even when it's hard.
As things stand, we live in a place where people sue big corporations for their own obesity or lung cancer, because we've taught them that the purpose of the law is to offer people excuses for their decisions. [sigh]
Anyway, I've now officially stepped over the line into the Abortion Debate, and I apologize for that. It's just been a while since I've said this stuff, and now and then, I have to say it Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: If a mother's life was in danger, couldn't they just take the baby early?
Actually, a friend of mine is having a cesarean at about 35 weeks because of the traumatic way that her body deals with the last month or two of pregnancy. She has never been able to carry a baby longer than that and both she and her first child nearly died during the delivery. I suppose she feels it's better to give the child a chance at life than to take it completely away.
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posted
Hmmm, you're probably right, Stargate. I wonder what could be done to lower the need for abortion at any stage. It seems as though there's talk all over the place about birth control and making good decisions, but there are still a lot of women getting pregnant who don't want a baby. Like I said, I'm pro-choice, but that doesn't mean that I cheer every time someone gets an abortion. It saddens me that it happens. I used to volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center, and many of our clients were just devastated when the test came back positive. However, many of them were overjoyed when the test came back negative. For those who weren't pregnant, we weren't allowed to discuss birth control with them. I understand that it was a Christian-based organization, but that just seemed kinda silly to me to expect that people having sex already were going to jump on the abstinence bandwagon.
quote: I understand that it was a Christian-based organization, but that just seemed kinda silly to me to expect that people having sex already were going to jump on the abstinence bandwagon.
It's the gut-wrenching feeling you have right before you see the test results. You'll jump through hurdles not to have to go through that again.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Geoff, I would like to mention that you may want to use a word other than "consequences"... Abortion (both natural and conscious-decision) is as much a consequence of pregnancy as bringing a child to term.
There are lots of natural consequences that humans have found ways to delay, avoid, or abolish altogether; you are simply displaying your own bias when assuming childbirth is the only consequence of pregnancy, and everything else is skirting responsibility.
posted
But PSI, we had several clients come in multiple times for pregnancy tests, so that gut-wrenching feeling must fade for some people. Perhaps it can even be a question of self-worth for some women.
posted
Even married people have unwanted pregnancies. Being married doesn't make you automatically ready to have a child.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
True, true. But how do you make that stick? Not every child who is raised to believe that he/she should wait for marriage before having sex is going to do so. Of course, we all know nothing is 100 percent. Mind you, I'm not arguing that abstinence is a bad idea; I think it's a wonderful idea. We always stress to our kiddos that MARRIED people are the ones who should be making babies, and the only way we've explained sex to our oldest is that it should happen between married couples. However, nature has played this trick on us so that our bodies sexually mature way before we emotionally mature. I worry that despite what we tell our kids, it's still going to happen.
posted
Stargate, how do you think decision making occurs in a marriage? A woman CAN have an abortion without her husband's permission, but it doesn't always happen that way.
Space:
quote: However, nature has played this trick on us so that our bodies sexually mature way before we emotionally mature.
I've always felt like society played a bigger part than nature in the emotional maturity of teenagers. Getting married at a young age didn't play such a huge problem for past generations.
posted
Kat! HAHA! How do those motions look, anyway? Are the similar to the ones I made at the guy that was speeding through my neighborhood yesterday when my child was near the street?
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Stargate, I wasn't using it as an "excuse" to justify society's decreasing morals. It was just something that I pointed out. I'd pretty much be an idiot if I thought that sexual maturation was the reason, neh? I think that lack of moral fiber comes from several places. The fact that sexual maturation comes before emotional maturation has just always seemed backwards to me; Mr. Opera and I were just talking about it the other night. I suppose it happens because while sexual maturation is helped along by good nutrition, etc., emotional maturation largely comes from age and experience.
With such an "us and them" mentality prevalent in politics, knee-jerk reactions like this are pretty predictable. I'd wager that these judges knew the outcome of this trial the day the ban went into effect, months ago.
And, at the risk of making Geoff feel dirty, I have to agree with him, totally.
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I'm a pro- life liberal, I support people making their own choices about their sex life, but responsibly.
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posted
I am all for personal responsibility, as RnD pointed out. But that would include making undesirable choices. Abortion, while not a choice I value or would participate in my marriage, is only ours to make and not the government. People can proclaim that people need to be responsible all they like, but as soon as we put caveats on what those choices are to be responsible about, we really lower the expectations of responsibility.
We say, "Have an abortion and you are a murderer!" and society says that you aren't responsible...
We say, "Have babies you can't support and you are a welfare queen!" and society says that you aren't responsible...
So it seems people who make bad choices have to live with the consequences of their bad decision making either way. Why say "responsibility!" but take away one of the possible consequences. People who are rabidly anti-choice have some odd delusions that the abortion process is an easy decision and done without any physical or emotion hardship. Having known people who have gone through that, it isn't the case in the least bit.
Either we are responsible for our actions or we are not. If you take away a choice such as abortion then why shouldn't the government get involved and say who can or can't have sex? Or more specifically, who can or can't be fertile? Why not make mandatory birth control and we have to go to the government to get permission to have babies? Why take away one choice and not the other?
posted
Well, considering the population problem I'm not sure that would be so bad, fil. I don't support it, but I can imagine it not being terrible. But seriously, fil, we're talking about someone's life here, and I think that's more important than whether or not someone suffers the proper consequences.
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quote:Either we are responsible for our actions or we are not. If you take away a choice such as abortion then why shouldn't the government get involved and say who can or can't have sex? Or more specifically, who can or can't be fertile? Why not make mandatory birth control and we have to go to the government to get permission to have babies? Why take away one choice and not the other?
While this applies to the gist of Dog's argument, it doesn't even speak to the unborn child being a separate human life deserving of the protection of the law.
posted
I don't know where you got the notion that the government should act as the almighty enforcer of karma, but it wasn't from conservatism.
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