An erosion of abortion rights
TAKING AN important medical choice away from women and doctors, the Supreme Court yesterday upheld a federal law banning the procedure known to opponents as partial-birth abortion. Other laws and court decisions have eroded the right to an abortion established by Roe v. Wade, but yesterday's 5-4 ruling is particularly threatening to that right for two reasons: The court approved the 2003 ban even though it does not allow exemptions based on the woman's health, and the court reversed its own earlier ruling on this procedure, suggesting it might be willing to reverse itself on Roe v. Wade as well.
In 2000, a court majority that included Justice Sandra Day O'Connor struck down a partial-birth abortion ban that did not include an exception for the woman's health. Since then, O'Connor left the court, and President Bush picked Samuel Alito to replace her, tipping the court in favor of the ban. Supporters of a woman's right to an abortion are now deeply concerned that a court with two Bush appointees opposed to abortion rights -- Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts -- might overturn Roe v. Wade altogether. If that happened, 30 states have laws in place that would ban all abortions within their borders.
Of the more than 1 million abortions in the United States each year, nearly 90 percent occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and would not be affected by yesterday's decision. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which specializes in sexual and reproductive health, less than 1 percent of all abortions, or about 2,200 in the year 2000, involved intact dilation and extraction -- the medical term for the procedure in question. Because it limits the risk of bleeding, infections, or a perforation of the uterus that could affect the woman's future fertility, this procedure is endorsed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which represents about 90 percent of all physicians in those specialties.
Drawing on the court's decision in 2000 rejecting Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortions, six federal courts had struck down the 2003 federal law. Yesterday's decision marked the first time the high court had approved a prohibition on a specific abortion procedure. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "The court's opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists."
The five justices of the court majority and the politicians who passed the law they approved have overruled the best judgment of the doctors who are most informed on this issue. Politics could trump medicine again -- unless backers of abortion rights use the ballot box to steer the country back toward support of a woman's right to end a pregnancy.
