Posted on 06/04/2003 6:40:34 AM PDT by grania
Key vote on ‘partial-birth’ abortions
House expected to approve ban, Bush is ready to sign on
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, June 4 — Culminating an eight-year struggle, congressional opponents of an abortion procedure they call partial birth abortion are on the verge of passing a law barring doctors from using it. The House on Wednesday is expected to approve the ban by a comfortable margin. 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.
Congress twice passed partial birth bans, but then President Clinton, citing the need for a health exception, vetoed both measures.
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.”
MOMENTUM SINCE 1995 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.” Advertisement
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.
JUSTICES WEIGH IN 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 then 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.
Nothing more needs to be said about this perverted ahole. He would rather not do anything, all the while babies were be ripped apart, than have the ba**s to do what was morally right. WHAT A POS>
The Senate has already passed the ban. This is as good as it gets, as far as the chance for passage and signing into law. I found it very disturbing that the House of Representatives didn't get to this sooner, with the President and Senate behind it (time is lives).
I hope that GWB comes home to a bill all ready to sign!
PS. we don't have cable.
The kill'em on the way out crowd, with RINO's Greenwood and Nancy Johnson leading the way, have offered an amendment that would ban all late term abortion EXCEPT to protect the life of the mother or to avoid ADVERSE health effects.
Sensenbreener had a greta quote from an abortionist paraphrased as such: "I will certify that ANY pregnancy is a danger to the life and/or health of the mother."
Lovely fellow.
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