Supreme Court to Expand Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Review

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 19, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Supreme Court is set to revisit a second Bush Administration appeal that seeks to reinstate a ban on partial birth abortion, reports the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

The ACLJ, which specializes in constitutional law, said it is pleased the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case, which involves the constitutionality of the national ban on partial-birth abortion.

“The Supreme Court took a significant step today that clearly puts the issue of partial-birth abortion front-and-center,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ, which litigates pro-life issues. “By taking a second case involving the constitutionality of the national ban on partial-birth abortion, the Supreme Court puts the spotlight on one of the most horrific medical procedures in existence today. The high court not only will determine whether Congress acted appropriately in enacting the ban, but the high court also has a critical opportunity to bring to an end – once and for all – the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. Taking a second case clearly elevates one of the most culturally significant issues of our time. The stakes are high and we are very pleased that the Supreme Court now has two opportunities to abolish what can only be described as infanticide.”

In 2000, five justices of the Supreme Court, including retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, ruled that the abortion right originally created in Roe v. Wade allows an abortionist to perform a partial-birth abortion any time he sees a 'health' benefit, even if the woman and her unborn baby are entirely healthy. (Stenberg v. Carhart, June 28, 2000). This ruling struck down the ban on partial-birth abortion that had been enacted by Nebraska, and rendered unenforceable the similar bans that more than half the states had enacted.

Nevertheless, in 2003 Congress approved and President Bush signed a national law, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. When he signed the ban, the President called partial-birth abortion "a terrible form of violence [that] has been directed against children who are inches from birth."

The federal law has faced legal challenges in three different federal circuits, and its enforcement has been blocked by court orders. Federal district courts in all three circuits ruled that the federal law violated the 2000 Supreme Court ruling. In all three cases the adverse judgments were affirmed by the appellate courts.

The ACLJ has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court representing 78 members of Congress and more than 320,000 Americans asking the high court to uphold the constitutionality of the national ban on partial-birth abortion in a case out of Nebraska.

In its brief filed in the Nebraska case, the ACLJ asserts: “Partial birth procedures represent the beachhead of this assault on postnatal life, the bridge between abortion and infanticide. Absent strong legal barriers and vigorous societal condemnation, partial birth procedures open the way to legal infanticide.”

"I believe the fetus is conscious," and that the pain during this procedure is "severe and excruciating" to 20-week-old pre-born children.
--Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, an Oxford and Harvard trained neonatal pediatrician and pain expert.

Illustration of partial-birth abortion performed
at 24 weeks gestational age.

Letter from Anthony P. Levatino, M.D., J.D., former abortionist, explaining that the images shown above "accurately depict" the partial-birth abortion method, and that "the images are size-appropriate to a fetus of approximately 24 weeks gestation." -- March 4, 2003

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In connection to the scientific fact that life begins at conception, science also proves beyond a doubt that the pre-born child experiences pain at 20 weeks, and at earlier ages as well at differing levels of perception.

This fact was brought out in open US federal court proceedings in 2004. Horrific testimony was entered into the official record each day in three separate federal District Court cases, each filed to stop the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, an Oxford and Harvard trained neonatal pediatrician and pain expert testified at the New York federal court hearings on April 13, 2004. Below is an excerpt from WORLD Magazine April 24, 2004 issue. The title of the article was Painfully unaware:

Dr. Anand took the stand in the morning and testified for hours that unborn children can feel pain even more vividly than adults or even infants. He said that by 20 weeks fetuses have developed all the nerve and brain functions to feel pain, but none of the coping mechanisms that help infants and adults to deal with the sensation. According to Dr. Anand's research, handling the fetus in the womb, delivering the child up to its head, slicing open its skull and sucking out the brains would all produce "prolonged and excruciating pain to the fetus."

The evidence for fetal pain is not new-Dr. Anand studied expressions of pain in unborn and neonatal children as early as the 1980s-but the legal argument is novel. Unlike previous legislative attempts to ban partial-birth abortion, Congress used a fetal-pain argument to rally support. If a fetus does feel pain as early as 20 weeks into the pregnancy, it bolsters Congress' ethical argument for banning the procedure. And in the courtroom it humanizes the unborn child in a way that the pro-life legal community has never been able to do. http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=8807

The pro-abortion side attempts to lessen the horror of the reality of murdering children in the womb and the terrible pain that these babies endure while being aborted by claiming that late term abortions are rare. But that outright lie is exposed many times over, from around the world.

As reported by The Washington Times, on April 7, 2004, Dr. Anand also testified in federal district court in Lincoln, Nebraska in the suit there to stop the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Dr. Anand testified that: "I believe the fetus is conscious," and that the pain during this procedure is "severe and excruciating" to 20-week-old pre-born children.

Under cross-examination, Dr. Anand said he believes a less-controversial abortion procedure, known as "dilation and evacuation" (D&E), would cause the same amount of pain to a child. An estimated 140,000 D&Es, the most common method of second-trimester abortion, take place in the United States annually. http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040406-111818-1409r

Below are excerpts from Fr. Frank Pavone’s August 15, 2005 newsletter:

In 1994, an article in the prestigious British medical journal, the Lancet, revealed hormonal stress reactions in the fetus. The article concluded with the recommendation that painkillers be used when surgery is done on the fetus. The authors wrote, "This applies not just to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures on the fetus, but possibly also to termination of pregnancy, especially by surgical techniques involving dismemberment."

In 1991, scientific advisors to the Federal Medical Council in Germany had made a similar recommendation.

In August 2001, Great Britain's Medical Research Council concluded that pain perception may be as early as 20 weeks; other studies place it as early as 10 weeks.

It should be noted that each year in the United States alone, over 18,000 abortions take place at 21 or more weeks of pregnancy.

The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act has now been introduced in Congress, to inform women having abortions at 20 weeks or more that their baby may feel pain. The legislation deserves our support. It would require that the mother be given the option to provide painkillers to her baby. This is not to justify abortion, but will certainly make many think twice about it. http://www.priestsforlife.org/columns/columns2005/05-08-15unbornpain.htm

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