4th U.S. Court of Appeals Declares Virginia PBA Ban Unconstitutional

Yesterday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared Virginia's ban on partial-birth abortions to be unconstitutional.

Now, you may ask-- "how is that possible in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Gonzales v. Carhart?"

Well, the 4th Circuit decided that because the federal ban was more explicit in its definition of what was banned.

What happens now?

According to AP, the state has two weeks to ask a full appeals court to review the panel's ruling or the state has 90 days to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Of the three judge's on the panel, only one, Judge Paul V. Niemeyer argued that the statute was "virtually identical" to the federal ban that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld.

Another judge argued that the statute imposed an "undue burden" upon women seeking an abortion (and that judge was joined by the third for a majority).

I say horse puckey-- two of the three judges on this appeals court panel were determined to find some way of declaring the law unconstitutional and so they did.

"The Abortion Debate Brought Home"

Sunday, the LA Times ran an opinion piece called "The Abortion Debate Brought Home" by Dan Neil, who writes a column for West magazine.

He opens his piece with, "My wife and I just had an abortion. Two, actually." From that point, Neil, who is "pro-choice," criticizes pro-lifers, the Supreme Court for upholding the federal ban on partial-birth abortions and, on a personal note, offends parents of children with disabilities and, specifically, parents of children with autism.

Neil explains that their third attempt at in vitro was successful and four of the five implanted embryos began to thrive. Two boys and two girls. Of course, doctors immediately suggested aborting two of the four-- in medicine, this is euphemistically referred to as "reduction" which bizarrely sounds like an exercise class at the Y.

After genetic testing to determine if any of the children could be candidates for abortion because of a disability, the testing showed all four to be perfectly normal. Yet, the Neil's decided to keep the girls. Asked how they made this decision, Neil writes, "Partly, it was a matter of how the fetuses were arranged. Partly, it had to do with other factors. Some studies show offspring of older fathers (I'm 47) run a higher risk of autism and males are four times as likely to be autistic."

Neil watched the doctor perform the abortion, writing that he sat holding his wife's hand, "watching the ultrasound as a needle with potassium chloride found its mark, stopping the heart of one male fetus, then the other, hidden in my wife's suffering belly."

I have sympathy with their desire to be parents, but that's where it ends. As a woman who has battled infertility, has had one miscarriage and is mother to two children with autism, my sympathy runs a little short with someone who thinks he somehow deserves children only on his terms.

Democratic Presidential Candidates Criticize Court Abortion Ruling

The Democratic presidential candidates vying for their party's nomination met last night in a debate at South Carolina State University. But there was little true debate, for the most part the candidates were complimentary, friendly and united in many of their opinions. This includes their joint opinion that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (PBABA) was wrong.

To top this, several candidates said they would not impose a litmus test on Court nominees but then added that any appointees would reflect their views on abortion on demand.

Oh, wow-- that's not a litmus test?!

(If you want to read an informative--but very graphic--article in .pdf detailing the testimony of abortionists in the lower court rulings on PBABA, click here.)

Partial-Birth Abortion

In many instances, the news media is using qualifiers to decribe yesterday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the ban on the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Many news outlets have been using words and phrases such as the "a ban on so-called partial-birth abortions" or something along the lines of "a ban on what opponents refer to as partial-birth abortions."

Regardless of how it's whitewashed, I find it hard to believe that there are those who can still support partial-birth abortions. Over at Writes Like She Talks, Jill is appalled that Cathy Cleaver Ruse of Family Research Council objected to the use of the partial-birth abortion technique in cases where the woman's mental health was listed as the reason for the abortion. And Jill connects the dots and concludes that, in wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, how can we not be concerned about a woman's "mental" health?

Jill apparently is unaware of the fact that, regarding abortion, mental health is not the same as well, mental health. We are not necessarily talking about defined mental problems or someone who is need of a stay in a hospital in order to cope. We're likely not talking about someone who is on medication for depression. Instead, we are talking about "health" as defined by the law in Doe v. Bolton, the companion ruling to Roe v. Wade. In determining whether a woman "qualified" for an abortion, the Court in Doe wrote: "The medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors--physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age-- relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health." The abortionist determines what is the qualifying factor. And if the qualifier isn't physical then it is mental.

And, remember, he gets paid for doing an abortion, he doesn't get paid for not doing one.

News articles and even statements by leaders of abortion groups have been very revealing over the years: the majority of partial-birth abortions are done on healthy mothers of healthy babies. In addition, if a woman were truly in dire circumstances, this would be the last abortion procedure she would want. It takes three days to do. The first two days, the abortionist inserts expanding laminaria into the opening of the cervix (the opening leading to the uterus) so he can perform the abortion on the third day. This is certainly not a time-sensitive, life-saving procedure.

Supreme Court Upholds Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act

Today, the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortions. It has taken 13 years to get to this point.

In the early 1990s, a paper was presented at a conference of abortionists by Martin Haskell, an Ohio abortionist who was one of the developers of the partial-birth abortion. In this paper, Haskell described the technique in full detail.

In 1995, members of the new Republican Congress (most notably Congressman Charles Canady of Florida) began work on introducing legislation that would ban the procedure. The National Right to Life Committee, where I worked for 10 years (from 1994-2004), was the leading force in working to pass the ban.

A hearty thank you goes to Douglas Johnson, NRLC's federal legislative director. Mr. Johnson spent thousands of hours crafting op-eds, position papers and letters to members of Congress as well as sending countless corrections to the news media. He and his staff lobbied unceasingly for passage of the legislation and worked to help other states pass similar bans.

It has been a long time coming but this brutal procedure that bordered on infanticide is now banned.