Posted on 06/03/2004 9:01:15 PM PDT by jays911
Judge hears final pleas on 'partial-birth' abortion
BY ROBYNN TYSVER
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU
RELATED STORY
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» Federal judge in California rejects abortion ban
LINCOLN - Decrying attacks on "activist judges," U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf defended the right of courts to review the "partial-birth" abortion ban passed by Congress.
Kopf said Wednesday the judiciary is one of the three branches of government and a legitimate part of the system's checks and balances.
Dr. LeRoy Carhart with his legal counsel, Priscilla Smith, outside the federal courthouse in Lincoln after closing arguments before U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf.
He also called arguments against so-called activist judges "stupid and superficial," saying he's never met a judge who decided legal questions based on personal beliefs.
Kopf's comments came during the question-and-answer period of final arguments Wednesday in a Nebraska trial challenging the federal ban. The case is one of three across the nation in which abortion-rights activists challenged the ban.
Last year, Congress passed the ban without an exception for the health of the mother, and President Bush signed it into law. It was counter to an earlier U.S. Supreme Court ruling that any such ban needed that exception.
The ban prohibits an abortion procedure known medically as intact dilation and extraction, in which doctors remove a fetus up to its shoulders and collapse its skull, so it can pass through the cervix.
It is a rarely used procedure. It has been estimated it is used in fewer than 5,000 out of 1.3 million abortions performed each year.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in California hearing a challenge from Planned Parenthood threw out the ban as unconstitutional, saying it is vague and threatens the health of women. The New York judge has yet to rule.
Kopf said he will likely release his opinion Aug. 31.
The trials have been cast by critics of "activist judges" as a showdown between Congress and the judiciary. They argue that some judges make, rather than enforce, laws.
During the trial in Lincoln, U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa appeared outside the courthouse to denounce "activist judges." The Republican said he would lead the effort to "rein in" such judges if they overturned the ban.
On Tuesday, after the California judge ruled, Bush's re-election campaign issued a statement that used the ruling to attack his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry.
"Today's tragic ruling upholding partial-birth abortion shows why America needs judges who will interpret the law and not legislate from the bench. . . . John Kerry's judicial nominees would similarly frustrate the people's will and allow this grotesque procedure to continue."
Kopf said he has never seen any proof that such activism exists in the judiciary.
"I've done this for 17 years now, and I've never met a judge (like that)," he added.
Kopf made his comments as both sides argued in the Nebraska case about how much weight he should give Congress' finding that the procedure opponents call "partial-birth" abortion is never needed for the health of the mother.
Congress made that argument a few years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska ban because it did not include the health exception.
Kopf noted that Congress made its findings without the usual standard of law, including sworn witnesses subject to cross-examination. He also noted that Congress' finding flies in the face of the opinion of a majority of abortion doctors that the procedure is sometimes needed for the safety of the mother.
The attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented Dr. LeRoy Carhart and three other abortion doctors in the Nebraska case, agreed.
Priscilla Smith said Congress' findings were more political than medical. She also said it did not reflect the "neutral, detailed probing and fact-finding" of a courtroom.
Anthony Coppolino, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, argued that Congress weighed the evidence on both sides and did not find substantial medical authority that would justify the procedure's use.
He also argued that Congress had the right to weigh in on an ethical concern to many in the public. "This is not merely pregnancy tissue . . . this is a human life," Coppolino said.
In addition, Coppolino argued there has never been in-depth research done to prove the procedure is safer than others.
Smith argued that among abortion doctors, it was generally accepted that it was safer to remove a whole fetus rather than dismember it in the womb. And, she said, the controversial procedure is typically used when the head of the fetus gets stuck in the womb.
She also said, once again, that if the ban were upheld, it could end abortions after the 12th week. She said that's because there was no clear distinction between the controversial procedure and a more routine, second-trimester procedure.
"Medicine is messy," she said. "It doesn't proceed in the way the defense would like it to proceed."
1--He also noted that Congress' finding flies in the face of the opinion of a majority of abortion doctors
2--"Medicine is messy," she said.
'nuff said. murderers.
Pull the other one.
sorry, it is late. i don't understand your post.
Who do they think they're fooling with this "health of the woman" sheep dip?
unfortunately, there is a whole segment of society that buys this B.S. my mother (bless her soul) was a pro-abortion partisan. it was not until college at a catholic university (in my pre-convert days) that good friends, in the kind of good, political, beer-fueled discussions that college offers, that i connected the dots, and realized the truth of abortion. thanks to those good friends and to the Jesuits who trained me in ethics.
the carharts and kopfs of the world scare me to death.
The editors of the New York Times never encountered a biased liberal journalist either.
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