Government
"Partial-birth abortion" ban again ruled unconstitutional
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Sept. 27, 2004
A third federal judge has declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf for the District of Nebraska ruled earlier this month that the law doesn't make exceptions for cases in which the procedure is deemed medically necessary to protect a woman's health.
LeRoy Carhart, MD, the physician who successfully fought a similar Nebraska law in a court case that wound up before the U.S. Supreme Court, and several other physicians filed the lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft when the ink was barely dry on the new law.
The act outlaws "partial-birth abortion" -- a nonmedical term lawmakers and some opponents use to refer to what most closely describes intact dilatation and extraction -- and creates criminal punishment for physicians who do the procedure. The act has not been enforced since it was signed into law because three lawsuits challenged it immediately.
Federal judges in New York and San Francisco similarly ruled the act unconstitutional. Appeals are under way, and the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to have the final say.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/09/27/gvbf0927.htm.