Reshaped high court takes abortion case

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court said on
Tuesday it will decide whether a ban on some abortion
procedures is unconstitutional, a case that could show if the
reshaped court will restrict a woman’s right to an abortion.

The justices agreed to review a U.S. appeals court ruling
that declared unconstitutional the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003,
because it lacks an exception to protect the health of a
pregnant woman.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to hear this case is a
dangerous act of hostility aimed squarely at women’s health and
safety,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood
Federation of America. “Despite 33 years of Supreme Court
precedent that women’s health matters, the court has decided it
will once again take up this issue.”

In taking the case, the high court will again be tackling
one of the most contentious issues it has faced since its
landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that women have a
constitutional right to abortion.

The court’s action was announced with new Justice Samuel
Alito joining Chief Justice John Roberts on the bench of the
nine-member court. The conservative Alito, Bush’s second pick
for the high court confirmed in the past year, replaced Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, who often cast the decisive vote in
support of abortion rights before she retired.

The law has never been enforced because of court challenges
and six different federal courts around the country have all
found it to be unconstitutional. The Justice Department asked
the Supreme Court to uphold the federal law as constitutional.

When it passed the legislation after nine years of debate,
the U.S. Congress decided not to include an exception for a
woman’s health, even though a Supreme Court ruling in 2000 on a
similar Nebraska law required such an exception.

The law contains an exception when the abortion is
necessary to save the life of the mother, but not one to
preserve the woman’s health. Any physician who knowingly
performs the procedure faces up to two years in prison.

The U.S. Justice Department said the phrase “partial birth
abortion” is commonly used to describe a late-term procedure
known as “dilation and extraction” or “intact dilation and
evacuation.”

Opponents of the law said it also would ban a more
frequently used abortion procedure known as standard dilation
and evacuation. That procedure is the most common one in the
second trimester of pregnancy, they said.

DOCTORS CHALLENGE LAW

The case before the Supreme Court involved a challenge to
the federal law by Dr. LeRoy Carhart and three other
physicians. Carhart also brought the successful challenge to
the Nebraska law.

In asking the court to hear the appeal, Solicitor General
Paul Clement of the U.S. Justice Department said, “This case
involves the constitutionality of a significant act of Congress
that has been invalidated,”

Fifteen states — Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida,
Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South
Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Virginia — supported
the appeal.

Attorneys from the New York-based Center for Reproductive
Rights opposed the appeal. They said the government seeks in
effect to have the Supreme Court overrule its 2000 decision
requiring a health exception.

Any weakening of this “would represent a significant
retreat from more than three decades of this court’s
jurisprudence striking down any abortion regulation that failed
to protect pregnant women’s health,” they said.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously last month that a New
Hampshire abortion law should not have been struck down
entirely when the problem involved only the part of the law
that lacked an exception for a pregnant minor’s health
emergency.