Supreme Court sets November 8 2006 for partial-birth abortion oral arguments

Aug 15, 2006 By Staff Baptist Press WASHINGTON (BP)--The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Nov. 8 on the constitutionality of a federal ban on the grisly procedure known as partial-birth abortion.

The high court announced Aug. 14 it would hear arguments in two cases involving the Partial-birth Abortion Ban Act the day after the general election. The justices will consider in back-to-back proceedings Gonzales v. Carhart, an appeal from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, out of the Ninth Circuit.

The Supreme Court, which will open its next term Oct. 2, is expected to issue an opinion in the cases before it adjourns next summer.

The 2003 law bars a procedure typically used in the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy. In the method, an intact baby is delivered normally feet first until only the head is left in the birth canal. The doctor pierces the base of the infant’s skull with surgical scissors before inserting a catheter into the opening and suctioning out the brain, killing the baby. The technique provides for easier removal of the baby’s head. One nurse who witnessed the procedure testified in court several years ago she saw the baby's hands "clasping and unclasping" and its feet "kicking" before it was killed.

Three different appeals courts at the federal level have ruled the prohibition is unconstitutional. The Eighth Circuit invalidated the law based on its lack of an exception for the health of the mother, while the Ninth Circuit said the ban imposes an undue burden on women and is too vague.

The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief filed in May in the Eighth Circuit case in support of the law. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops submitted the brief.

The SBC approved resolutions condemning the partial-birth procedure in both 1996 and 2002.

Pro-life advocates hold out hope that the January confirmation of Samuel Alito as an associate justice means the Supreme Court will reverse the lower court decisions. Alito replaced retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who voted with a 5-4 majority that struck down a state ban on partial-birth abortion six years ago.

After President Bush signed the bill into law in November 2003, abortion rights organizations quickly challenged it in three courts and blocked its enforcement. Federal judges in New York City, San Francisco and Lincoln, Neb., struck down the law. Three-judge panels in the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, the Eighth Circuit, based in St. Louis, and Second Circuit, based in New York, upheld the lower court decisions.

The judiciary’s requirement of an exception for a mother’s health has frustrated attempts to enact a meaningful prohibition of the partial-birth procedure. Until now, the dilemma that advocates of the ban have been unable to solve is this: If they pass a partial-birth abortion ban without a health exception, the courts strike it down; if they approve a ban with a health exception, it is ineffective because of the judiciary’s definition of “health.”

In its 1973 Doe v. Bolton opinion, which accompanied the Roe decision, the Supreme Court defined maternal health so expansively it had the practical effect of permitting abortion for any reason throughout all stages of pregnancy.

Congress approved the Partial-birth Abortion Ban Act by wide margins in 2003, with the Senate voting 64-34 for the bill and the House of Representatives passing it in a 281-142 vote. Congress had twice adopted partial-birth abortion bans in the 1990s only to have President Clinton veto them. In both 1996 and 1998, the House achieved the two-thirds majorities necessary to override vetoes, but the Senate fell short.

This happens THOUSANDS of times a year. It is a horrendously brutal act of violence. It is not only MURDER, but a crime against humanity.

Partial-Birth Abortion

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

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

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.