Supreme Court Upholds Partial Birth Abortion Ban ActThe 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.
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.
I'm more pro-choice than not, but I've always thought the partial birth abortions were the one area that required more restrictions. It just seems to cross the line from abortion to infanticide.
In addition, I note that this opinion confirms what I've tried to remind people all along: that rulings contrary to Roe v Wade do not equal criminalizing abortion nationwide, but simply allow states to regulate aspects of the procedure if they so chose.
