Posted on 06/27/2007 10:41:40 AM PDT by JKrive
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The Louisiana Legislature approved a ban on a late-term abortion procedure yesterday, the first state to do so since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal ban earlier this year.
The House voted unanimously to approve a measure that would allow "partial-birth" abortions only when failure to perform it would endanger the mother's life. The procedure would be a crime in all other cases, including situations where the pregnancy is expected to cause health problems for the mother.
The measure goes to Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Democrat who describes herself as pro-life but has not indicated whether she plans to sign the bill.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Gary Beard, a Republican, would impose fines of $1,000 to $10,000 and jail terms of one to 10 years for doctors who perform the surgery. The measure matches the federal ban that President Bush signed into law in 2003, upheld in April by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The procedure, generally used to end pregnancies in the second and third trimester, involves partially removing the baby intact from a woman's uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion. Opponents of the procedure call it partial-birth abortion.
The procedure is the subject of bitter debate between pro-life groups, who support state bans, and pro-choice groups, who opposed the federal ban and have fought state bans, including Mr. Beard's legislation.
Planned Parenthood officials argued against the ban in committee hearings but received a chilly response from lawmakers. Only one legislator voted against the measure, in committee or on floor votes: Rep. Charlie DeWitt, a Democrat who asked why only the doctor — not the mother — should be subject to prosecution.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Many other papers picked up this story, The International Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and more. (Admittedly they almost all ran the AP story, but at least they ran the story.)
The partial-birth abortion issue is just slightly big news. This bill is the first to pass both houses of a state legislature (notably almost unanimously), and it somehow misses the editors at the New York Times.
Read more at Critical Mass.
Justice and protection just now starting to filtering down. Unbelievable!
God Bless LA!
Why don’t they just make the part about sucking out the baby’s brain illegal?
go ahead and terminate the ‘pregnancy’ if you need to (for ...ahem... health reasons) but don’t stop half way though and suck out the brain of the baby. Then you can have your ‘abortion’ and I can have a live baby. Pull it out intact.
what’s wrong with that idea?
What's wrong with it is that, underneath all the excuses and high-minded rationalization, abortion is really about avoiding the inconvenient and painful consequences of bad decisions.
That, in a nutshell, is what liberalism is all about: avoiding consequences. The liberal is willing to make others pay any price, including death, to avoid accepting the consequences of her own decisions.
That was my first thought as well. You know the world has gone batty when news like this surprises you.
I think I meant why hasn’t anyone simply proposed banning the ‘sucking the brains out’ portion of the procedure.
Let’s see them try to argue the medical necessity of that step.
They have successfully obfuscated that point and made this a discussion about medical necessity of the entire procedure.
I mean if there is some health reason that the baby has to be removed, then go ahead and remove it alive, don’t stop half way through just to kill it.
I think the first ‘doctor’ who invented this procedure should have been charged with murder.
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