Bush's court delivers US abortion ban
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National Clergy Council President Rev. Rob Schenck holds a one-man
counter protest, as abortion rights demonstrators protest outside
the Supreme Court in Washington following the court's decision on
partial birth abortion. -AP
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George Bush's new, conservative Supreme Court delivered a victory to
anti-abortion activists yesterday when it upheld the so-called Partial
Birth Abortion Act, which outlaws a specific, relatively rare procedure
usually carried out on pregnant women reaching the end of the second
trimester.
The issue has been mired in controversy for years, with anti-abortion
activists arguing that the operation, which involves crushing the
foetus's head, is unspeakably barbaric while their opponents say it can,
in certain circumstances, be the least traumatic way of ending a
pregnancy and causing least damage to the health of the mother.
Six courts have ruled that the 2003 federal law banning the procedure
was unconstitutional because it did not provide an exception to protect
the life and health of the mother.
It seems likely that the Supreme Court would have made a similar
ruling until last year, when Sandra Day O'Connor retired and was
replaced by Samuel Alito, a hardline conservative.
That change shifted the balance on the Court to a 5-4 majority
generally hostile towards abortion laws. Before Justice Alito's
appointment, John Roberts, a conservative, replaced the late William
Rehnquist as Chief Justice.
The ruling yesterday was widely expected, but that made it no less
likely to restoke the fires of the abortion debate and heighten
speculation that this Supreme Court might one day strike down Roe vs
Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that gave women the constitutional right
to seek an abortion in the first place.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the procedure
was "laden with the power to devalue human life" and was likely to
traumatise women who underwent it.
Justice Kennedy also pointed out that other late-pregnancy abortion
procedures were available, so banning "intact dilation and extraction" -
known only to its opponents as partial-birth abortion - did not
necessarily close medical doors in dire circumstances.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court's sole woman justice, called the
decision "alarming". "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 wrote in a dissenting judgment.
Independent.co.uk |
