Supreme
Court Countdown: Partial-Birth Abortion
In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) the Court upheld
the federal ban on partial-birth abortion.
In the days leading up to the oral arguments
on November 8, 2006, this campaign offered
information on why it was important for the
Court to get it right
this time. |
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| #22 |
Warren
Hern, M.D., late-term abortion specialist and author
of the widely used textbook Abortion Practice,
has stated:
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"I
have very serious reservations about this [partial-birth
abortion] procedure. You can’t really
defend it. … I would dispute any statement
that this is the safest procedure to use." (Quoted
in American Medical News, Nov. 20,
1995.)
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| #21 |
Trial
testimony of Curtis Cook, M.D., specialist in high-risk
obstetrics, in federal partial-birth abortion case
now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court:
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"[Question]:
When a pregnancy has to be ended prematurely,
because of a maternal health condition of the
kind that you treat, is it ever necessary to
take a destructive act against the fetus directly,
in order to protect the health interests of
the mother?
"[Answer]: No, all that is required for recovery of the mother is for separation
of the fetus and placenta from her system so that she can start the recovery
process. There is nothing inherent in the destruction of the fetus that starts
to facilitate that process." (Carhart v. Ashcroft, 331 F.Supp.2d
805 (D. Neb. 2004), Trial Transcript, April 7, 2004, at 1306.)
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| #20 |
Federal
appellate judge John M. Walker, Jr., on the U.S. Supreme
Court’s 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking
down a state ban on partial-birth abortion:
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"The Stenberg Court’s
holding is flawed in at least three respects:
(1) it equates the denial of a potential health
benefit (in the eyes of some doctors) with
the imposition of a health risk and … promotes
marginal safety above all other values …;
(2) it endorses a rule that permits the lower
courts to hold a statute facially invalid upon
a speculative showing of harm, even if, in
the vast majority of cases, the statute’s
application would not lead to an unconstitutional
result; and (3) it establishes an evidentiary
standard that all but removes the legislature
from the field of abortion policy." Concurring
opinion, National Abortion Federation v.
Gonzales, 437 F.3d 278, 291 (2d Cir. 2006).
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| #19 |
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy,
dissenting from the 5-4 opinion in Stenberg v.
Carhart that struck down a state ban on partial-birth
abortion:
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"Requiring
Nebraska to defer to Dr. Carhart's judgment
is no different from forbidding Nebraska from
enacting a ban at all; for it is now Dr. Leroy
Carhart who sets abortion policy for the State
of Nebraska, not the legislature or the people.
[Planned Parenthood v.] Casey does
not give precedence to the views of a single
physician or a group of physicians regarding
the relative safety of a particular procedure." 530
U.S. 914, 965 (2000).
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