NEW YORK (ABP) — A second federal judge has ruled against the government's ban on so-called “partial birth” abortions, saying the federal law passed by Congress last year is unconstitutional.
The Aug. 26 ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Casey of New York City came on the heels of a similar decision by a San Francisco judge in June.
That earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton barred the government from enforcing the ban, which Hamilton determined is unconstitutionally vague in defining the acts and procedures it prohibits. The Justice Department said earlier this month it would appeal the San Francisco ruling.
Conservatives, including many Christians, applauded the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, signed last year by President Bush, as a significant first step in the battle to reverse legal abortion. Proponents of the ban said it applied only to one kind of late-term procedure involving the destruction of a “living fetus” that is at least partially outside the mother's body.
Supporters of abortion rights say the partial-birth ban is an attempt to erode reproduction rights established by the U.S. Supreme Court. They contend the ban is unconstitutional because it lacks an exception allowing the procedure to protect a woman's health.
In the latest decision, Judge Casey said the procedure is protected by previous Supreme Court rulings and could only be outlawed if there were a “medical consensus” that no circumstance exists in which a woman could benefit from it. “While Congress and lower courts may disagree with the Supreme Court's constitutional decision, that does not free them from their constitutional duty to obey the Supreme Court's rulings,” Casey wrote. Nonetheless, Casey called partial-birth abortion a “barbaric” procedure that probably subjects fetuses to “severe pain.”
The American Center for Law and Justice, a frequent critic of partial-birth abortion, denounced Casey's ruling. “While the decision is disappointing, it's important to realize that this ruling represents only the beginning of a lengthy legal process that will end at the Supreme Court of the United States,” said ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow. “We remain committed to working for the protection of human life and outlawing the barbaric procedure known as partial-birth abortion.”
Meanwhile, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the best way to eliminate partial-birth abortion is by replacing the Supreme Court justices whose rulings protect it. “We are not going to be able to eliminate this heinous, barbaric procedure called partial-birth abortion — which is the killing of a partially born, viable, outside-the-womb baby — until we change the makeup of the current Supreme Court. As Justice [Antonin] Scalia has noted succinctly, this court has taken sides in the culture war, and it's not the side of life.”
-30-