boblandis Posted June 5, 2003 Group: Royal Member Followers: 2 Topic Count: 252 Topics Per Day: 0.03 Content Count: 1,859 Content Per Day: 0.22 Reputation: 27 Days Won: 0 Joined: 09/04/2001 Status: Offline Birthday: 03/16/1963 Share Posted June 5, 2003 JIM ABRAMS The Associated Press Wednesday, June 4, 2003; 2:47 PM WASHINGTON - The House on Wednesday is expected to vote largely in favor to ban a medical procedure referred to as partial birth abortion. After minor differences with a Senate-passed bill are worked out, the legislation would go to President Bush, who is ready to sign it into law. Passage would culminate an eight-year struggle for the ban. Abortion rights groups say they would immediately go to court to challenge the law, which would be the first to prohibit a certain abortion procedure since the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing the right to choose an abortion. The Supreme Court in 2000, by a 5-4 vote, struck down a similar Nebraska state law as unconstitutional, but a court ruling this time could coincide with the possible resignation of a judge and the president's nomination of a new, more conservative member. "President Bush is taking the first step in banning all abortion procedures and ultimately banning abortion," said Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "This is really serious." Republicans have been trying since they captured control of the House in 1995 to prohibit doctors from committing an "overt act" to kill a partially delivered fetus. Partial birth is described as a case in which the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother or, in the event of a breech delivery, if "any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother." Bush, after Senate passage, called it an "abhorrent procedure that offends human dignity." There's considerable disagreement on the scope of the measure. Anti-abortion groups say it is used commonly in the last trimester on healthy babies of healthy mothers. Opponents of the bill say the procedure known as dilation and extraction is performed only rarely, and that the vague definition in the legislation could make other procedures used in the second trimester legally questionable. The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, passed in nearly identical form by the Senate last March, 64-33. In what was probably a fleeting victory of the abortion rights side, the Senate voted, 52-46, in support of a nonbinding amendment endorsing the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing abortion rights. The amendment is likely to get removed in a House-Senate conference. Opponents of the partial birth bill, led by Reps. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and James Greenwood, R-Pa., are offering an alternative that would make it illegal to perform any abortion procedure after the fetus has become viable, unless the doctor determines that it is necessary to preserve a woman's life or protect her from serious adverse health consequences. The Senate defeated a similar alternative, with opponents arguing that the health exception offered too large a loophole for doctors to perform abortions. The partial birth bill, which makes it a crime for a doctor to perform the procedure, includes an exemption for cases in which the life of the mother is jeopardized, but not for general health reasons. The Supreme Court, in Stenberg v. Carhart, struck down a similar Nebraska law on the grounds that it lacked a health exception to protect the mother and it placed an "undue burden" on a woman's right to choose because the definition of the banned procedure was too vague. Chabot said Tuesday they had tightened the language to meet the court's objections and had accumulated evidence to prove that the procedure was "dangerous to a woman's health, and never medically necessary." Congress twice passed partial birth bans, but former President Clinton, citing the need for a health exception, vetoed both measures. The 2000 Supreme Court ruling sidetracked a third attempt, and a fourth attempt failed last year when the Senate, then under Democratic control, refused to take up the measure. --- The bill is H.R. 760. On the Net: NARAL: http://www.naral.org/ National Right to Life Committee: http://www.nrlc.org/ Chabot: http://www.house.gov/chabot/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest daughterofaking Posted June 7, 2003 Share Posted June 7, 2003 Thank God the vote has gone in favour of banning this barbaric practice. Let's pray the courts don't strike down the vote. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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