Senate Passes Abortion Ban
WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Tuesday to ban a rarely used abortion procedure and sent the bill to President Bush for his promised signature.
Abortion-rights advocates have promised to pursue an immediate injunction. to block the legislation from taking effect. It would be the first ban on a specific abortion procedure since the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that a woman has a constitutional right to have an abortion.
The Senate voted 64-34 on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban of 2003, which the House approved three weeks ago. Both New Hampshire senators, Republicans Judd Gregg and John Sununu, voted for the ban, while both Maine senators, Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, voted against it.
“We cannot put women’s health and lives at risk by substituting the judgment of politicians for the judgment of medical doctors,” Snowe said.
The bill’s sponsors said it would outlaw a procedure performed late in a pregnancy in which a fetus is partially delivered before being aborted. Abortion-rights advocates argue that procedure is extremely rare, but add that the bill could also prohibit some safe and common abortion procedures performed as early as 12 weeks into a pregnancy.
Three years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law banning so-called partial-birth abortions because it did not contain an exception for the woman’s health and because the procedure might be the safest way of terminating a pregnancy.
Officials from the Center for Reproductive Rights, which successfully argued that case on behalf of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, a physician who challenged the Nebraska law, said they plan to challenge the federal law, in part because it also contains no health exceptions.
“We’re basically seeking to defend our precedent and our victory and Dr. Carhart’s victory,” said Priscilla Smith, the director of the center’s domestic legal program. The Planned Parenthood Federation of American, on behalf of its affiliates nationwide, and the American Civil Liberties Union, representing the National Abortion Federation, also are expected to take the issue to court.
The Center for Reproductive Rights will also seek an injunction to keep the law from going into effect immediately after the President signs it.
“You go in for immediate injunctive relief,” Smith said. She said the center wanted to ensure the law “won’t stop physicians from providing safe procedures and won’t require them to impose risks on their patients.”
