GOP candidates praise abortion ruling

By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer
4 minutes ago
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/abort...qrNZUlK2ocA


WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidates, who differ on abortion rights, were unanimous Wednesday in their praise for the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Democratic candidates uniformly deplored the 5-4 ruling in which the court said the 2003 ban does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

Abortion opponents had hoped for such an outcome from the more conservative court.

"I'm very happy about the decision given my position on abortion. Partial birth is one of the most odious aspects of abortion," Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) said while campaigning in South Carolina.

In a separate statement issued by his campaign, McCain said, "It is critically important that our party continues to stand on the side of life."

The admonition seemed aimed at former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, other leading contenders for the GOP nomination.

Giuliani favors abortion rights and has drawn criticism for supporting public funding of some abortions. But he says he would appoint justices very similar to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, President Bush's appointees. Both were part of the majority in Wednesday's ruling.

Giuliani said in a statement that he approves of the high court's action.

"The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion. I agree with it," he said.

Romney opposes abortion rights, although supported the issue previously. He opposes a constitutional amendment banning abortion and says states should decide the issue.

"Today, our nation's highest court reaffirmed the value of life in America by upholding a ban on a practice that offends basic human decency," Romney said in a statement. "This decision represents a step forward in protecting the weakest and most innocent among us."

McCain's record is not clear-cut on abortion, either: He said once in 1999 that he didn't think Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion, should be overturned, but now he advocates its repeal.

Republican Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record), a presidential hopeful favored by abortion foes, said the ruling would result "in lives being saved." He also voted for the ban in 2003.

Longshot GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo said he hopes the decision is the first step toward a broader abortion ban.

Tancredo, a Colorado congressman, called the procedure at issue a "barbaric practice of infanticide" and termed Roe v. Wade a "moral and intellectual travesty."

Among Democrats running for president, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware voted for the ban, while Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) of Connecticut voted against it. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who was running for president at the time, missed the votes on the issue.

On Wednesday, Edwards said he "could not disagree more strongly" with the high court's decision.

"The ban upheld by the Court is an ill-considered and sweeping prohibition that does not even take account for serious threats to the health of individual women," Edwards said. "This hard right turn is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election."

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) said the decision is a dramatic departure from precedents safeguarding women's health.

"I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman's right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women," Obama said.

Clinton said Wednesday's ruling "blatantly defies" the high court's decision in 2000 to strike down a state partial-birth abortion law because it failed to provide an exemption for a woman's health.

"As the Supreme Court recognized in Roe v. Wade in 1973, this issue is complex and highly personal; the rights and lives of women must be taken into account," she said. "It is precisely this erosion of our constitutional rights that I warned against when I opposed the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito."

wow. i didn't know until today that 5 out of 9 justices are (conservative) Catholics.

now, do you guys know how many Catholics *ever* in US history sat on the Supreme Court??

eleven in US history.
five of them on the current court.

it's unprecedented.



Supreme Court Upholds Late Abortion Ban: Right-wing Judicial Activism Run Amok

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on April 18, 2007, Printed on April 19, 2007
www.alternet.org/story/50723/


Last year, in defending his decision to vote for the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, Senator Bill Nelson (D-NE) said that it was based, in part, on Alito's "pledge that he would not bring a political agenda to the court."

Today, Nelson and the 18 other Democratic Senators who voted against the attempted filibuster of Alito reaped what they sowed. The new court -- the first in American history made up of a majority of conservative Catholics -- upheld the 2003 ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions, a made-up term that's become a hot-button issue for social conservatives, but is largely based on junk science and flies in the face of medical "best practices." It will go down as a text-book case of right-wing judicial activism, with the justices essentially overruling the medical community.

In upholding the ban, the Supreme Court overturned a critical legal principle that's guided courts for almost two decades: that any restriction on abortion must have an exception for the life and health of the pregnant woman.

That principle was the key to the landmark decision, Stenberg v. Carhart, which overturned a similar ban in Nebraska. Stenberg, while split five to four, was not a wishy-washy decision. The majority found that Nebraska's law violated the constitution as interpreted in both Roe v. Wade and the 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The Supremes made two important findings in that case. First, the Nebraska ban didn't have an exception for cases when the health of the mother might be threatened. Second, the court found that the ban on "partial-birth abortions" (a term coined by abortion foes that appears nowhere in the medical literature) was too vague and, as such, placed too great a burden on a woman's right to determine her own care.

It's worth noting that Alito cited Carhart in 2000, when, as a member of the Third District Court of Appeals, he voted to strike down New Jersey's ban on late-term abortions. "The New Jersey statute," he wrote, "like its Nebraska counterpart, lacks an exception for the preservation of the health of the mother. Without such an exception, the New Jersey statute is irreconcilable with [Stenberg]. What's more, Alito supported the court's finding that "the Nebraska [ban] applied, not only to the "dilation and extraction" or D & X procedure, but also to the more commonly used D & E procedure." In other words, Alito agreed that the ban could apply to all sorts of otherwise legal abortion procedures.

At the time, many in the forced childbirth movement argued that Alito's decision in the New Jersey case proved that he would not be reliably anti-choice. But as today's ruling shows, he didn't hesitate to overturn Stenberg when he got the chance.

(I should note that Alito and Chief Justice Roberts both declined to join a concurring opinion by Scalia and Thomas that would have overturned Roe v. Wade.)

What's remarkable about the bill upheld by the Supremes today is that about 50 percent of the text is devoted to explaining why Congress is justified in ignoring the court's findings in Stenberg.. The essence of the argument is that Congress has different standards of evidence and needn't consider the same data that the courts looked at. The argument was supported with case law from challenges to the Voting Rights Act and a telecommunications law, neither of which were questions of scientific fact. In overturning Stenberg, the court effectively affirmed the idea -- long popular among the Christian-right -- that the judiciary in general should and can be 'restrained' by legislative bodies.

The text of the law argues that "the great weight of evidence presented at the Stenberg trial and other trials challenging partial-birth abortion bans, as well as at extensive Congressional hearings, demonstrates that a partial-birth abortion is never necessary to preserve the health of a woman." It goes on to say, "A prominent medical association has concluded that partial-birth abortion is 'not an accepted medical practice.'" (Physicians who testified before Congress included members of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations.) The American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, while differing slightly in their positions, both opposed the ban as it was written.

To claim that there is anything approaching medical consensus on whether the banned procedure can have a positive effect on maternal outcomes is pure hokum. As the ban's supporters are quick to argue, there have been no controlled studies comparing different abortion procedures, an argument that cuts both ways.

It's undeniable that there are well-credentialed physicians who hold that dilation and extraction procedures (or D and X -- the procedure that the laws are supposed to regulate) in some cases are a safer form of abortion than the available alternatives.

Judge Richard Casey, who presided over an earlier challenge to the federal law, agreed. Leading up to the trial, Casey was considered by anti-choice activists to be the best hope to support the ban. He opined that the procedure was "gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized," and subjected the fetus to "severe pain." According to The New York Times, Casey dismissed the testimony of A.C.L.U. witnesses as being less than credible. Nonetheless, he wrote that Congress had enacted the law "without seriously examining the medical" issues. "This court heard more evidence during its trial than Congress heard over the span of eight years," Casey wrote. He held that lawmakers had "ignored furious dissension among doctors over the safety and necessity" of the abortion method. The lawmakers had overlooked testimony in their own hearings, he said, according to the Times.

What's more, it's impossible to imagine that a scientific consensus could be achieved given Stenberg's other significant finding: that the definition of "partial-birth abortion" was unduly vague.

Testifying in the Nebraska challenge to the federal ban, Dr. Leroy Carhart (of the original Stenberg v. Carhart case) said that as the federal ban was written, "There are at least 21 different procedures that it covers." He added: "There are terms in this act that I do not understand... and that have many definitions." According to Omaha's NBC affiliate, Carhart said that the act could affect common abortions performed "as early as 12 weeks into the pregnancy."

The vagueness is intentional; the most likely result of today's ruling will be a whole new push to overturn Roe. As Hadley Arkes, a scholar at Amherst, Wrote of the possibility of Carhart being overturned, "the regime of Roe will have come to its end, even if Roe itself is not explicitly overruled. What the Court would be saying in effect is, 'We are now in business to consider seriously, and to sustain, many plausible measures that impose real restrictions on abortion.'"

Let me stress a point an important point: if the goal of these laws were primarily to halt a practice the religious right considers "baby-killing," they could have achieved that years ago. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California), one of the more liberal Senators, even offered a common sense amendment to the federal that would have excepted those abortions performed "where, in the medical judgment of the attending physician, the abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the woman or avert serious adverse health consequences to the woman." If that kind measure had been included in the law upheld by the Supremes today, there would be little controversy. As it stands, there is sure to be series of high-profile fights over abortion that will stretch on for years to come, just as there has been for the past three decades.

Perhaps that's the whole idea.

Intact Dilation and Extraction (D&X) is only performed around 2,200 times a year, out of the million or so abortions performed. It's only slightly less painful and dangerous than childbirth, and is used only for medical reasons.

www.womensenews.org/article.cfm

It's performed, for example, when a woman has an anencephalic pregnancy, where the fetus literally has no brain. Such a pregnancy could potentially last for over a year, because the proper signals that instigate labor may not get sent, while a 'beating heart' is sustained at the expense of a woman who might be crippled or rendered infertile in the normal delivery of such a dead on arrival baby.

www.dailykos.com/story/200...205035/772

It's clear that these five justices have no particular regard for the life or health of women.

This is why we didn't want Roberts. He consistently judged against abortion rights. Is anyone surprised? Sorry you weren't aware that the majority of Supremes were Catholic, Inna. It pays to pay attention. We can only hope that a later Supreme Court will overturn this, the way they overturned the Dred Scott decision.

Meanwhile, we can still practice menstrual extraction. If you don't do a pregnancy test beforehand, it isn't technically abortion. You can make a Del-Em with parts from a hardware store. Knowledge is power! Don't use coat hangers or knitting needles, you can die that way, ladies. They aren't sterile and they can poke through the uterus wall, causing you to hemorrhage to death. Ouch.

www.io.com/~wwwomen/men...traction.html

more of the same...

Supreme Court Ruling Threatens Women's Health

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
April 19, 2007
www.alternet.org/story/50781/


The Supreme Court handing down what's being called one of the biggest setbacks for the abortion rights movement in years. On Wednesday, the court voted 5-4 to uphold a ban on late-term abortion. The so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was signed into law in 2003, but it had been held up by rulings from lower courts. The Supreme Court ruling marks the first time justices have agreed a specific abortion procedure can be banned. It's also the first time since Roe v. Wade that justices approved an abortion restriction that does not contain an exception for the health of the mother.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the decision "alarming" and "irrational." She said, "[The ruling] tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists." She later continues, "[It] cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."

Amy Goodman discusses the implications of the ruling with Louise Melling, director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. As an attorney, Melling has appeared in federal and state courts around the country to challenge laws that restrict reproductive rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Louise Melling, welcome to Democracy Now!

LOUISE MELLING: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the significance of this ruling.

LOUISE MELLING: This decision, as you said, is devastating. It's incredibly significant. This is, as you commented on, the first time the court has upheld a restriction on abortion that lacks protections for women's health. This is the first time -- this is the first-ever federal law banning certain abortions, and the court has upheld that. This really is a decision that undermines a core principle of Roe that's been in place since 1973, that women's health must remain paramount.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance also of this majority, the 5-4 majority. with the new Chief Justice, John Roberts, with Samuel Alito, the two George W. Bush nominees to the Supreme Court, ruling with a majority against late-term abortion.

LOUISE MELLING: Well, what you see is a real shift right. In 2000, the Supreme Court considered a law that was also called a partial-birth abortion law, and the court struck that law. And in striking that law, what the court did was, there, as it had always, recognized women's health to be paramount. What the court did in 2000 was also say, we're going to listen to doctors, and where some doctors say that procedures that might be banned here are the safest for women's health, we will defer to those doctors, and there has to be a health exception to ensure that women's health is protected. And in that decision, the court also looked to, as you said, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists view. ACOG is the leading medical organization for physicians who care for women during pregnancies. Now -- and that decision was 5-4 also, with O'Connor, Justice O'Connor, in the majority.

Now, seven years later, what's really different is you have two new members of the court. This is the first decision of the court on abortion since Justice O'Connor resigned, and you have a very, very significantly different holding.