Third court rejects abortion law
A federal court in Nebraska ruled on Wednesday that a U.S. law that bans a late-term abortion procedure is unconstitutional because it does not allow doctors to perform it to protect the health of the mother.
In a 476-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf in Lincoln rejected Congress’ ban on the rarely used procedure, which involves ending a pregnancy by partially delivering a fetus and crushing or puncturing its skull. Abortion rights advocates call it “intact dilation and extraction”; critics call it “partial-birth abortion.”
Wednesday’s ruling followed similar decisions by federal courts in New York City and San Francisco against the law, which easily passed the Republican-led Congress last year and includes a two-year prison term for doctors who perform the procedure.
The legal battle over the procedure represents the latest turn in the war over abortion rights. It could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2000 ruled that a Nebraska law banning the procedure was unconstitutionally vague because it could have been read to outlaw other types of procedures.
The Justice Department made it clear Wednesday that it will fight for the federal ban. “After signing this act of Congress, President Bush pledged that ‘the executive branch will vigorously defend this law against any who would try to overturn it in the courts,’ ” the department said in a statement. “We will continue to defend the law to protect innocent new life.”
Justice lawyers already had said they planned to appeal the San Francisco court’s ruling against the ban in June. The department also is likely to appeal a ruling by a federal judge in New York City who struck down the U.S. law last month.
Justice officials are not enforcing the law pending the resolution of the court cases.
In signing the law last year, Bush said the measure “affirmed a basic standard of humanity, the duty of the strong to protect the weak.”
But LeRoy Carhart, the abortion doctor who challenged the federal ban in the Nebraska case, said “the government has no business in a medical professional’s office determining the safest or best treatment for patients with no knowledge of the medical circumstances.” It was Carhart who successfully challenged the Nebraska law before the Supreme Court four years ago.