Partial Birth Abortion ^BAN Legislation

Delaying Tactics by Opponents Delay Final Votes on
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act Until September, 2003

[For further information, contact Douglas Johnson, legislative director at the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), at Legfederal@aol.com or 202-626-8820. Extensive documentation on this subject is posted in the Partial-Birth Abortion section of the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html ]

WASHINGTON (July 31, 2003) -- It is expected that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act -- a major pro-life federal legislative priority since 1995 -- will be signed into law by President Bush this fall. Pro-abortion groups have vowed to immediately challenge the law in federal courts, arguing that it violates a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortion (Stenberg v. Carhart).

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), commented, "President Bush, 70 percent of the public, two-thirds of Congress, and four Supreme Court justices say there is no constitutional right to deliver most of a living baby and then puncture her head with a scissors. But five Supreme Court justices said that Roe v. Wade guarantees the right of abortionists to use the partial-birth abortion method whenever they see fit. We hope that by the time the federal ban reaches the Supreme Court, at least five justices will be willing to reject such extremism in defense of abortion."

The U.S. Senate passed its version of the ban (S. 3), sponsored by Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), on March 13 by a lopsided vote of 64-33. Before passing the bill, the Senate voted 52-46 to add one amendment opposed by pro-life supporters of the bill: the Harkin Amendment, which endorses the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision and urges that it not be overturned.

The House version of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (H.R. 760) is sponsored by Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Oh.), chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. On June 4, the House approved the bill 282-139, in a form identical to the Senate-passed bill except without the Harkin Amendment.

Because the two bills differ with respect to the Harkin Amendment, a House-Senate conference committee is necessary. NRLC and other supporters of the bill will urge members of the conference committee to drop the Harkin Amendment. The Senate and House must then vote a final time on the "clean" bill before it can be sent to President Bush, who is eager to sign it.

After the House passed the bill in June, pro-life Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tn.) attempted to accomplish the procedural step necessary to convene a conference committee, but Democratic senators delayed this action by demanding an additional eight hours of debate and another vote on a "motion to instruct" conferees to include the Harkin Amendment in the final bill. On July 30, Senator Frist agreed to this request. The "motion to instruct" will be advisory only and will not bind the actions of the subsequent conference committee. As part of the same deal, Senate Democrats agreed to allow the bill to go to conference without further delay, following the vote. However, because the agreement was reached only two days before the Senate was scheduled to begin a month-long recess, the agreed-on debate cannot occur until after September 1.

In earlier years, Congress approved national bans on partial-birth abortion twice, but they were vetoed by President Clinton. On each occasion, the House voted to override the vetoes, but supporters fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate. [Sept. 26, 1996, and Sept. 18, 1998]

In January 22 remarks to the March for Life, President Bush said, "My hope is that the United States Congress will pass a bill this year banning partial-birth abortion, which I will sign. Partial-birth abortion is an abhorrent procedure that offends human dignity." The President also urged Congress to act on the bill in his January 28 State of the Union speech.

The January 2003 Gallup poll found that 70% favored and 25% opposed "a law that would make it illegal to perform a specific abortion procedure conducted in the last six months of pregnancy known as ‘partial birth abortion,’ except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother." (margin of error +/- 3%)

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accurately described the partial-birth abortion method in his dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000): "After dilating the cervix, the physician will grab the fetus by its feet and pull the fetal body out of the uterus into the vaginal cavity. At this stage of development, the head is the largest part of the body. . . . the head will be held inside the uterus by the woman’s cervix. While the fetus is stuck in this position, dangling partly out of the woman’s body, and just a few inches from a completed birth, the physician uses an instrument such as a pair of scissors to tear or perforate the skull. The physician will then either crush the skull or will use a vacuum to remove the brain and other intracranial contents from the fetal skull, collapse the fetus’ head, and pull the fetus from the uterus."

An eight-page instruction paper on how to perform this type of abortion, written by an abortionist in 1992, in a sense began the national debate about partial-birth abortion. It is posted on a congressional website: www.house.gov/burton/RSC/haskellinstructional.pdf.

Most partial-birth abortions are performed in the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy (20-26 weeks). At this stage, an infant who is spontaneously prematurely delivered is usually born alive. There is abundant medical evidence that a human baby at this stage is extremely sensitive to pain – whether she is inside the womb, fully born, or halfway between.

Some partial-birth abortions are performed in the seventh month and later – and not only in cases of fetal disorders or maternal distress. It is noteworthy that in Kansas, the only state in which the law requires separate reporting of partial-birth abortions, abortionists reported in 1999 that they performed 182 partial-birth abortions on babies who were defined by the abortionists themselves as "viable," and they also reported that all 182 of these were performed for "mental" (as opposed to "physical") health reasons. See: www.kdhe.state.ks.us/hci/99itop1.pdf (on page 11).

In June 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling in Stenberg v. Carhart, struck down a Nebraska law that was similar to the federal ban that was under consideration in Congress at that time, citing Roe v. Wade. In response to the Stenberg v. Carhart ruling, the new federal bill differs in two significant respects from the bans approved by the 104^th Congress and 105^th Congress (which were vetoed by President Clinton).

The five-justice majority in Carhart thought that Nebraska’s definition of "partial-birth abortion" was vague and could be construed to cover not only abortions in which the baby is mostly delivered alive before being killed, but also the more common second-trimester "dilation and evacuation" (D&E) method. In a "D&E," a well-developed unborn child is dismembered piece by piece. (For a better understanding, see the Nucleus Medical Art image at www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/DEabortiongraphic.html)

During a D&E, an arm or leg is sometimes pulled into the birth canal before being twisted off, while the baby is still alive in the womb, so the justices thought this might be considered a "partial-birth abortion" under the Nebraska definition. (Even after one or more limbs are twisted off, it takes a little while for the baby to bleed to death, or to be killed by the final stage, the crushing of her skull.)

In order to avoid any possibility of such confusion, the new bill defines a prohibited partial-birth abortion as one in which "the person performing the abortion deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother," and then kills the baby. [italics added for emphasis] Some pro-abortion groups continue to assert that this definition covers abortion methods other than that depicted. (For example, in a letter published in the February 23, 2003 issue of The New York Times, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood of New York City wrote that the bill "as written would outlaw some of the safest and most common methods of abortion used throughout a woman’s pregnancy, as early as 10 weeks in some cases.") But they have not explained how. It appears that such advocates are counting on journalists not to demand details on how the actual language of S.3/H.R. 760 could possibly be applied to any first-trimester abortions, or to second-trimester or third-trimester dismemberment procedures.

In Stenberg, the five-justice majority also ruled that an abortionist must be allowed to use the partial-birth abortion method if he believes that it is the method which has the lowest risk of side effects for any particular woman seeking an abortion in the late second trimester (not only women with a "health" problem). The majority reached this result by deferring to findings of fact by the trial court, which were based on acceptance of assertions by late-term abortionist Dr. LeRoy Carhart and others that the partial-birth abortion method was sometimes the method least likely to cause side effects.

The new federal bill responds to the five-justice holding with congressional findings that partial-birth abortion is never necessary to protect the health of a woman and, indeed, exposes a woman to substantial and additional health risks. The bill concludes that, based on the extensive congressional hearing record on partial-birth abortion, "Congress finds that partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother; is in fact unrecognized as a valid abortion procedure by the mainstream medical community; poses additional health risks to the mother; blurs the line between abortion and infanticide in the killing of a partially-born child just inches from birth; and confuses the role of the physician in childbirth and should, therefore, be banned."

When legislation dealing with partial-birth abortion was first introduced in Congress in 1995, major pro-abortion groups insisted that the method was used very rarely, only a few hundred times a year, and only in cases involving acute medical crises. There was always ample documentation to the contrary; these claims were political concoctions, dictated by polling data, not facts (see, for example, the leaked memo by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, "Positioning on so-called ‘partial birth’ abortion," September 16, 1996, here: http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/lakememopba.pdf)

Nevertheless, these assertions were accepted and repeated incessantly as fact by many major organs of the media until at least late 1996, when several newspapers published reports based on interviews with various abortionists who acknowledged that the method was employed frequently and mostly for purely elective abortions.

The pro-abortion disinformation campaign suffered another blow in February 1997, when Ron Fitzsimmons, then and now the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (NCAP), admitted that he and leaders of other pro-abortion groups knew better when they claimed that the partial-birth method was used rarely and only in extraordinary circumstances. Fitzsimmons said this was merely a "party line" adopted by the major pro-abortion advocacy groups. Regarding his own (albeit minor) role in disseminating this "party line," he said, "[I] lied through my teeth." The New York Times reported (Feb. 26, 1997, p. A11), "In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along, Fitzsimmons said." (20 weeks is the halfway point in pregnancy – 4½ months in layperson’s terms.) (See this and related clippings at www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html, in the late 1996 and early 1997 archive.)

On March 4, 2003, Fitzsimmons (still head of the NCAP) confirmed that he believes that the statements quoted in that New York Times story are still accurate today.

A great deal of other evidence – collected by congressional committees, journalists, and other entities both before and since 1997 – supports Fitzsimmons’ statements. In January 2003, even the Alan Guttmacher Institute – an affiliate of Planned Parenthood – published a survey of abortion providers that estimated that 2,200 abortions by the method were performed in the year 2000. While that figure is surely low for reasons discussed by NRLC elsewhere (www.nrlc.org/press_releases_new/release011503.html), it is more than triple the number that AGI estimated in its most recent previous survey (for 1996).

Despite all of that and more, some journalists and some advocates continue to disseminate the old, discredited misinformation. To cite just one example: "A so-called partial-birth abortion is defined generally as a late-term procedure in which the fetus is aborted after it is partially outside the mother's body. It is usually performed in cases when the mother’s life is threatened or the fetus is deformed." (From "Anti-abortion lobby counting on victories in 108th Congress," by Pam Brogan, Gannett News Service, December 17, 2002.) In another recent example, in "Senate OKs ban on a later-term form of abortion" (March 14), Boston Globe reporter Susan Milligan told readers that the method is used because "of fetal abnormalities or medical conditions threatening a woman" (no other reasons were mentioned in the story). The mythology ("It is generally performed late in pregnancy after discovery of damage to or abnormalities in the fetus") was also recited in a news story in the March 15 San Francisco Chronicle.

For more information, see "Some Journalists Just Won’t Give Up Discredited Myths About Partial-Birth Abortion," http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBAmythsmemo01303.html. In addition, an NRLC monograph, "Revival of Some Old Myths on Roe v. Wade and Partial-Birth Abortion," critiques some other "media myths" about partial-birth abortion and about the Supreme Court decisions that bear on the subject, including Roe v. Wade. You can read or download it from www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/roevwademyths.html.

Many lawmakers who oppose the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act tell their constituents that they instead favor a bill to ban "late-term" abortions with a "health" exception. These competing proposals (offered as "substitute amendments") are complete shams -- hollow bills concocted to provide political cover for lawmakers who wish to keep perfect ratings in pro-abortion "scorecards," while hoodwinking their constituents into believing that they oppose partial-birth abortions.

The leading House advocates of phony-ban legislation (H.R. 809) are Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.). Hoyer has a 100 percent voting record in NARAL scorecards, and Greenwood is co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus. Hoyer and Greenwood have written that this so-called "ban" actually would allow third-trimester abortions even for "mental health." ( www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/Phony ban on late term.pdf )

In a press conference on March 12, 1997, Hoyer suggested this "mental health" clause should apply when "it poses a psychological trauma to the woman to carry to term." On June 4, 2003, Reps. Greenwood and Hoyer were permitted to offer their bill on the House floor as a "substitute amendment" to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, but it failed, 133-287 (House roll call no. 240).

In the Senate, similar "phony ban" substitute bills were offered by Senator Dick Durbin (D-Il.) and by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.); both were rejected. The Feinstein Substitute would have explicitly allowed abortions after "viability" for any "health" reason. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), a backer of the amendment, took the floor to defend keeping abortions available -- after viability -- based on "mental health" justifications. (See Congressional Record, March 12, 2003, page S-3587.)

Additional documents on medical, legal, and legislative aspects of partial-birth abortion are posted at www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html. A good primer is the testimony NRLC presented to a joint hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the U.S. House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee in March 1997, which contains footnoted citations to some of the more thorough journalistic examinations (including interviews with partial-birth abortionists) and to primary documents: www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/test.html.

Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Passes U.S. Senate;
Pro-Life Forces in House Work to Defeat "Phony Ban"

WASHINGTON (April 5, 2003) – The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act has cleared one a major hurdle. On March 13, after three days of heated debate, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the bill (S. 3), sponsored by Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), on a lopsided vote of 64-33.

However, two more major obstacles must be overcome before the bill – which the National Right to Life Committee helped to initiate in 1995 – can actually end the brutal method of killing a partially born baby.

First, the bill still faces concerted resistance from pro-abortion forces in the House of Representatives. Once that resistance is overcome and the bill is signed by President Bush, it will face immediate legal challenges in the federal courts, with its fate ultimately to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

For most of a week in the Senate, opponents of the ban argued that the bill violates two U.S. Supreme Court rulings -- Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion on demand, and Stenberg v. Carhart, a 2000 decision in which five justices held that Roe v. Wade covers even partial-birth abortions. The five-justice ruling struck down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion, and at the same time had the result of blocking enforcement of similar bans that had been enacted by more than half of the states.

Following the Senate’s approval of the ban, NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson commented, "President Bush, 70 percent of the public, 64 senators, and four Supreme Court justices say there is no constitutional right to deliver most of a living baby and then puncture her head with a scissors. But five Supreme Court justices did say that partial-birth abortion is protected by Roe v. Wade, and 33 senators voted the same way. We hope that by the time this ban reaches the Supreme Court, at least five justices will be willing to reject such extremism in defense of abortion."

According to a report in the March 29 edition of Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, three pro-abortion groups "are coordinating efforts to challenge the bill in three different federal courts." The groups are the Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Abortion Federation, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

According to the report, "Lawyers from the three groups could file lawsuits challenging the measure ‘within hours’ of the law’s enactment, said Priscilla Smith, who will be the lead attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights’ challenge."

The Senate rejected two attempts to erase S. 3 and replace it with "phony ban" alternative bills that were sponsored by pro-abortion Senators Dick Durbin (D-Il.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.).

However, the Senate did attach a non-binding amendment, offered by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), endorsing Roe v. Wade. Seventeen senators who voted for the Harkin Amendment also later voted to pass the bill.

The Harkin Amendment has no legal force, and it is expected to be dropped from the bill in the future House-Senate conference committee that will finalize the bill before President Bush signs it. (Click here to see the key roll calls on amendments to and passage of the bill.)

In a written statement following the Senate vote, President Bush said, "Partial-birth abortion is an abhorrent procedure that offends human dignity, and I commend the Senate for passing legislation to ban it. Today’s action is an important step toward building a culture of life in America."

Initial House Action

On March 25, the House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee conducted a hearing on the House version of the bill (H.R. 760), which is sponsored by subcommittee Chairman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio).

Dr. Mark Neerhof, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Medical School, testified that the method is "excruciatingly painful" for the baby. Simon Heller, an attorney associated with the Center for Reproductive Rights, argued that the bill violated the Supreme Court’s application of Roe v. Wade, but the measure was defended by Prof. Gerard Bradley of Notre Dame Law School.

On March 26, the full House Judiciary Committee approved H.R. 760 on a party-line vote of 19-11, with all Republicans voting in favor of the bill and all Democrats opposing it. The committee rejected numerous weakening and gutting amendments to the bill, all on party-line votes. As approved by the committee, the bill is identical to that passed by the Senate, except that it does not contain the Harkin Amendment.

No schedule has yet been announced for the full House to take up the bill. Currently, Congress is preoccupied with matters relating to the war in Iraq.

Hoyer-Greenwood "phony ban"

In the House, pro-abortion forces are attacking the bill in two ways.

First, they are promoting an alternative bill (H.R. 809), sponsored by Congressmen Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.).

Hoyer has solidly pro-abortion rating in NARAL scorecards, and Greenwood is co-chairman of the Pro-Choice Caucus.

Despite the pro-abortion credentials of the prime sponsors, advocates of the measure claim that it would restrict all methods of "late-term" abortions, and some gullible editorial writers and others have accepted this claim. However, NRLC and other pro-life groups call the bill "the phony ban."

The Hoyer-Greenwood bill would actually allow abortion on demand by any method – including partial-birth abortion – until the abortionist himself declares that the baby is "viable." Even after that point – indeed, up until birth – the bill would allow abortion by any method if the abortionist says it would "avert serious adverse health consequences to the woman."

Hoyer and Greenwood have admitted in writing that this includes "mental health."

Moreover, in a press conference on March 12, 1997, Hoyer suggested this "mental health" clause should apply when "it poses a psychological trauma to the woman to carry to term."

"Many lawmakers who oppose the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act tell their constituents that they instead favor a bill to ban so-called ‘late-term’ abortions, with an exception for narrowly defined ‘health’ cases," explained NRLC’s Douglas Johnson. "But in reality, these competing proposals are complete shams – hollow bills concocted to provide political cover for lawmakers who wish to keep perfect ratings with pro-abortion groups, while hoodwinking their constituents into believing that they oppose partial-birth abortions.

Regarding the Hoyer-Greenwood measure, Johnson commented, "Based on the explicit statements of Hoyer and Greenwood, it is clear that any lawmaker who votes for the Hoyer-Greenwood bill is voting to allow the killing of viable babies based on claims this is necessary to prevent psychological injury to the mother. Any lawmaker who votes to allow third-trimester abortions for emotional reasons should be prepared to defend that stance to their constituents."

Hoyer, Greenwood, and other pro-abortion House members want to offer their bill as a "substitute amendment" on the House floor. If this "substitute amendment" were to be adopted by majority vote, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act would be erased. It is not yet known whether the House Rules Committee will permit a vote on this substitute amendment.

Even if no such vote is permitted, however, there will very likely be a vote on a motion (called a "motion to recommit") that would add a "health" exception to the ban – an exception so broadly worded that it would allow partial-birth abortion to be performed any time an abortionist asserted that it would benefit a woman’s emotional well-being.

If the House rejects these "killer" amendments and passes the ban intact, it will go to a House-Senate conference committee, which will write the final version. The conference committee will be controlled by lawmakers who support the bill, and they are expected to drop the pro-Roe Harkin Amendment that was added by the Senate.

Both houses must then approve the final version of the bill, which is called a "conference report." The bill will then be sent to President Bush for his signature.

Senate Republican Leadership Pushes Ban

Congress passed bans on partial-birth abortion in 1996 and 1997, but those bills were successfully vetoed by President Bill Clinton. Following the election of President Bush, the House again passed the ban in July of 2002, but Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), who at that time was Senate majority leader, refused to bring it up for a vote, thereby killing the bill for the year.

The Republicans won a one-seat Senate majority in the November, 2002 election, which made pro-life Senator Bill Frist (R-Tn.) the majority leader. Frist and other Senate Republican leaders promptly made the ban one of their "top ten" legislative priorities.

However, Senate approval came only after three days of often-heated debate. Senator Santorum spent many hours on the floor, arguing against hostile amendments and responding to misstatements of fact by pro-abortion senators.

Throughout much of the debate, Santorum and other pro-life senators displayed a series of large color illustrations of a partial-birth abortion.

Santorum and his allies turned back three attacks, any one of which could have killed the bill.

First, it was necessary to defeat a "substitute amendment" (alternative bill) offered by pro-abortion Senator Dick Durbin (D-Il.). Durbin claimed that his proposal would ban most partial-birth abortions, allowing only those needed to prevent "risk" of "grievous injury to her [the mother’s] physical health." But NRLC pointed out that the amendment actually contained overlapping loopholes that resulted in its being "all exception and no ban."

NRLC noted that when the Senate first considered a nearly identical proposal in 1997, Dr. Warren Hern, a leading practitioner of very late abortions who wrote the textbook Abortion Practice, commented, "I say every pregnancy carries a risk of death," and therefore, "I will certify that any pregnancy is a threat to a woman’s life and could cause ‘grievous injury’ to her ‘physical health.’"

After extensive debate, the Senate rejected the Durbin Substitute,

60-38. Among those who voted against it were Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and six other hard-core pro-abortion senators, "who apparently thought it looked too much like a real restriction, even though it was entirely hollow," said NRLC’s Douglas Johnson.

Another alternative bill ("substitute amendment") was offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.). The Feinstein Substitute would have allowed abortion with no limitation whatever until the point that an abortionist declared a baby to be "viable," and even after that based on any "health" claim whatever.

Supporters of the Feinstein Amendment did not deny that it would allow the killing of infants capable of surviving on their own – even in the final three months of pregnancy – for reasons of "mental health." Indeed, Senator Clinton took the Senate floor to specifically defend that position, arguing, "If we have learned anything in the last several decades, it is that there is no artificial divide between mental and physical health. The mind and the body are a totally integrated system. One affects the other. I believe that mental health is health."

The Feinstein Amendment also failed, 35-60. A motion by pro-abortion Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) to send the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it probably would have died, failed 42-56.

Frist Backs Ban

Majority Leader Frist, the only physician in the Senate, spoke in strong support of the ban on partial-birth abortions.

Frist said that experts believe "an infant . . . in fact, does feel horrific pain during the forcible manipulations and the stabbing of the skull during partial-birth abortion."

"The only advantage of partial-birth abortion – which is a disturbing advantage – is the guarantee of a dead infant," Frist said, adding, "Partial-birth abortion is more dangerous to the health of the mother than alternative procedures."

"The passage of this legislation demonstrates how devastating the elections of 2002 were in giving control of the Senate to anti-choice leadership," commented NARAL President Kate Michelman after the Senate approved the bill.

Resources

The NRLC website also contains the most extensive collection of resource materials on partial-birth abortion available anywhere on the internet.

The collection includes extensive documentation on all disputed issues surrounding partial-birth abortion. Much of this information is distilled in the testimony that NRLC presented to a joint hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the U.S. House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee in March 1997, which contains footnoted citations to many primary sources (including journalists’ interviews with partial-birth abortionists).

A recently published NRLC monograph, "Revival of Some Old Myths on Roe v. Wade and Partial-Birth Abortion," critiques some "media myths" about partial-birth abortion and about Supreme Court decisions that bear on the subject, including Roe v. Wade.

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