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DLR'sCock
11-05-2006, 04:03 PM
Supreme Court to Hear Major Abortion Case Next Week
By James Vicini
Reuters

Saturday 04 November 2006

Washington - The first nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure faces U.S. Supreme Court scrutiny next week in cases testing whether President George W. Bush's two new conservative appointees will restrict abortion rights.

Returning to one of the nation's most divisive, emotional and politically charged issues, the high court considers the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act the Republican-led U.S. Congress approved and Bush signed into law in 2003.

The arguments on Wednesday in two cases widely viewed as the most important of the court's 2006-07 term occur the day after voters go to the polls nationwide to decide whether Republicans keep control of Congress. South Dakota voters will cast ballots to decide whether a law banning almost all abortions should be repealed.

The Supreme Court will not be revisiting its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that women have a basic constitutional right to abortion, but will be reviewing whether a particular surgical abortion method can be outlawed.

The law makes it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion during which a part of the fetus, either the "entire fetal head" or "any part of the fetal trunk past the navel," is outside the woman's uterus.

The law's supporters say the procedure, known by doctors as intact dilation and extraction, is mainly used for late-term abortions, but opponents say it bans some abortions in the second trimester of pregnancy.

At issue is whether the law is unconstitutional because it fails to provide an exception for abortions to protect the health of a pregnant woman, whether it imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to seek an abortion and whether it is too vague.

Adopted by Congress after nine years of hearings and debate, the law has never been enforced because of court challenges. The six lower federal courts that reviewed the law all declared it unconstitutional.

The cases represent the first significant test of whether abortion rights will be restricted because of the retirement of moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who provided the decisive vote on the divided court for such rights.

Bush replaced her with the more conservative Justice Samuel Alito. He also appointed another conservative, Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts and Alito as U.S. Justice Department lawyers in the 1980s and early 1990s opposed the 1973 abortion ruling.

Women's Health

The challenge to the law will be argued by Priscilla Smith of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights and by Eve Gartner of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

"This case is about whether the Roberts court will follow settled law and protect women's health from harmful restrictions. If they don't, women's health is at risk," Smith said.

"The government is arguing that politicians, not doctors and their patients, should have the final say in private medical decisions," Gartner said. "Lawmakers should stop playing politics with women's health and lives."

Solicitor General Paul Clement of the Justice Department, the Bush administration's top courtroom lawyer, will defend the law.

The act "advances vital state interests in protecting human life and preventing a rarely used and gruesome late-term abortion procedure that resembles infanticide," he said in written arguments to the court.

The key vote in the case could belong to Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Supreme Court in 2000 struck down a similar Nebraska law by a 5-4 vote, with Kennedy dissenting.

A big question during the arguments will be whether the moderate conservative Kennedy, who has replaced O'Connor as the key swing vote on the nine-member court, changes his mind in considering the federal law.

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