Finally
The Supreme Court has ruled that the ban on Late Term abortion. This has been too long incoming. Late Term Abortion is barbaric and shouldnever be used. Ther AMA and almost all doctors agree that Late Term Aborions should never be performed and are never medically necessary. They are many other ways to do abortions, it is that this is just easiest for the doctor. Congratulations for President Bush in getting Alito and Roberts to join the bench in the Supreme Court.
Court Backs Ban on Abortion Procedure
Apr 18 10:18 AM US/Eastern
By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long- awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
The decision pitted the court’s conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush’s two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.
It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how—not whether—to perform an abortion.
Abortion rights groups have said the procedure sometimes is the safest for a woman. They also said that such a ruling could threaten most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, although government lawyers and others who favor the ban said there are alternate, more widely used procedures that remain legal.
The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions.
More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics. Nearly 90 percent of those occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not affected by Tuesday’s ruling.
Six federal courts have said the law that was in focus Wednesday is an impermissible restriction on a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
The law bans a method of ending a pregnancy, rather than limiting when an abortion can be performed.
A big Fat Slob has a differnt take on the ruling
Political Vindication agrees with me
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Welcome to the PGN, Stix.
For me, the basic problem with the bill is that it is a legislation of morality. In the arena of medicine, there is no reason to substitute legislative for medical judgment on questions of the proper treatment, including the medical ethics of the procedure. But that wasn’t the issue for the Court to decide.
Constitutionally, the Supreme Court has clearly and several times reaffirmed that no regulation of abortion procedure can pass Constitutional muster unless it includes an exception for the health of the mother. This decision overturns that precedent.
From a social standpoint, if Constitutional parameters are going to sway with the changes in the Court, then the Court fails to do what it was designed to do and what, at least since Marbury, has been the most important role of the Court — give finality to disputes over Constitutional issues.
There are well-established bases on which the Court has historically recognized would justify such a change in direction as the Court today took on an issue well and clearly settled for decades. The decision today doesn’t justify itself by those bases. With this kind of wily-nily shift in the rules, adjusting one’s conduct to comply with exisitng rules is discouraged — because they could always change tomorrow. Note that this problem is issue-neutral — if the Court could so blithley justify itself today on the DX abortion method, they can easily do so tomorrow on water rights or tax issues.
Back to your post, I have to take issue with your statement that almost all doctors agree that the method is never appropriate. To the contrary, as the Court decisions noted, almost all doctors, and all pertinent medical associations, agree that the method is a legitimate one. They also agree that its medical justification is extremely limited and that it would be medically and ethically permissibile only in the rarest of cases.
This is why, of all the abortions performed in the United States, only one-tenth of one-percent of them are performed using the DX method.
This was bad legislation to begin with and it resulted in bad law. While one can never be sure where a particular Court decision will go over time, the threat of unintended consequences is always present in Supreme Court decisions, especially where they overturn decades of precedent. The implications of this decision are exceedingly broad and it signals precisely the kind of cavelier treatment of precedent whcih Roberts, falsely it appears, tried to convice the Senate that he would not abide.
Thanks for the link.
ABFS
Nice to meet you.
Well since I have had many family members in the medical and law professions, I can tell you that a mjority of Doctors and nurses are against the Partial Birth Abortion. The AMA has said many times that there is no medical reason for the procedure. The Gynecolost hve sais that it is medical becasue it is a cash cow for them There is no way that having a baby until the head is almost out and crushing its skull is in any was a proper medical precedure. The medical reason for it is that it might harm the psychological aspect of the mother, that is that they just realized they don’t weant ot have a baby. There are many other viable options other than the Partial Birth Abortion for that anyway.
And if you ask most lawyers, they think that Roe vs. Wade was one of the most ridiculous rulins ever in the Supreme Court. They just made up stuff that was not in the Constitution. It should have always been a state issue, and the Federal Government should have never gotten involved.
You’ll want to read the court opinions which report the factual record developed on the medical opinions — the adjudicated facts, developed at the trials of these cases, show that the information you are receiving from the medical people you know is wrong. We all get opinions and “information” from the people we know. Some information is good, some bad. But, at a trial, the factuals record is developed according to rules of evidence, by adversaries who test and probe and offer counter evidence. Generally, what is developed through that crucible is more reliable than what Cousin Eddy had to say.
On the legal side, the information that you’ve been receiving about the standing of Roe is also wrong. (Roe, by the way, was not at issue in this case. This case concerned the Casey decision.)
The day will come when science will discover a way to save those babies only weeks old – and abortions will truly be murder in the eyes of the future American.
When that happens, what will the left say? Will they see that every child ‘aborted’ by their mother is now capable of being adopted out in nine months to new parents, or will they unveil what purpose abortion really serves – population control?
Science will change this debate, and in the process, will uncover the darkness that lurks in human nature…
You might want to look at who the expert wirnesses were. You can pay a doctor to say about anything in a courtof law. And my dad was a delegate for the Illionois AMA and they voted that Partial Birth Abortion is never really a good way for abortion. All they have to do is let the baby come out a fewmore incheds and the baby is born. How is using a vacuum cleaner while most of the baby is out of the women’s body gone to ay a mother’s life. It is never medically necssary. There are many differnt ways to have an abortion other than havein the baby born except wiht the skull in the vagina and then killing the baby with a vacuum cleaner. Late term abortion are never medically necessary, except i very few cases, but this pratice is used all the time. If you haven;t figured out that you dn;t want tthe baby by the third trimester (whatever that is, it is not a medical term) than you should not have an abortion.
We should have a system like Europes. After 3 months you can not have na abortion. It is much better. Nowhere except the USA do they do this kind of procesure.
If any procedure is sacrosanct as long as it can be said that it is there to save the life of the mother, then no procedure, no matter how depraved, is sanctioned without recourse to any moral test. Our courts often deal in issues with an eye to ‘evolving standards of decency,’ – can this not be one of them?
It’s fine to be concerned about legislating morality – the left and right use the government to circumscribe our rights all the time ‘for our own good.’ You’re concerned about this case because it puts in peril the concocted constitutionality of Roe. You ought to be worried – bad law deserves a second look. But defending dilation and extraction is a gruesome chore even for one who appeals to the spectre of ‘choice.’
We can all find names with letters following them to vouch for our position – but it is ultimately a moral issue. I choose to err on the side of life. You on the side of choice. We will see which side secures the prospect of freedom…
If any procedure is sacrosanct as long as it can be said that it is there to save the life of the mother, then no procedure, no matter how depraved, is sanctioned without recourse to any moral test. Our courts often deal in issues with an eye to ‘evolving standards of decency,’ – can this not be one of them?
It’s fine to be concerned about legislating morality – the left and right use the government to circumscribe our rights all the time ‘for our own good.’ You’re concerned about this case because it puts in peril the concocted constitutionality of Roe. You ought to be worried – bad law deserves a second look. But defending dilation and extraction is a gruesome chore even for one who appeals to the spectre of ‘choice.’
We can all find names with letters following them to vouch for our position – but it is ultimately a moral issue. I choose to err on the side of life. You on the side of choice. We will see which side secures the prospect of freedom…