Daniel B. Honigman's site

Sneaky one, huh?

The Supreme Court today voted 5-4 to uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003. A possible repeal/amendment of the ban - considered invalid because its lack of a health exemption for pregnant mothers - was on the docket, but was shot down.

Partial-birth abortion generally take place after Week 20 of term. In the procedure, birth is induced and the fetus is destroyed.

According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, the key swing vote in these divided appeals, said the federal law “does not have the effect of imposing an unconstitutional burden on the abortion right.” He voted with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

In a spirited dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on Court, said the majority opinion “cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away a right declared again and again by this court, and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives.”

What are the long-term effects of this decision? The Roe v. Wade (1973) decision will probably be revisited.

Funny how this was on the front page of neither CNN.com, Yahoo News nor MSN News. It was, however, the top item on Google News as of 10:13 p.m., C.S.T., albeit strung from an article in the Independent, a British newspaper.

ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS ALERT: Here’s the Question report for this decision, taken from the U.S. Supreme Court Web site.

Share this entry

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!