April 19, 2007
EDITORIALS ON SUPREME COURT
ABORTION BAN
Los Angeles Times
EDITORIAL: A U-turn on abortion;
Ignoring precedent, the Supreme Court upholds a ban on a procedure
that is thankfully quite rare.
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.
Boston Globe
EDITORIAL: An erosion of abortion rights
A pregnant woman generally cannot learn whether a fetus she's
carrying has a chromosomal defect such as Down syndrome, or another
grave affliction, until after the 12th week of pregnancy.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court reached deeply into women's lives
and took away one medical option they have had to deal with such
a wrenching decision.
In a 5-4 decision, the bitterly divided court upheld Congress'
2003 ban on what doctors call "intact dilation and evacuation"
and what critics call "partial-birth abortion."
By any name, it is a gruesome procedure. But the American College
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it has safety advantages,
particularly for women with serious medical conditions —
it can avert "massive hemorrhaging, serious infection and
subsequent infertility."
President Bush and Congress ignored that authoritative opinion
from specialists. In 2003, lawmakers substituted their own scientific
wisdom, insisting that the procedure "is never necessary."
Doctors who performed it could face two years in prison. Bush
signed the measure, but it has been tied up in the courts. Now
it is the law of the land.
To use Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's word, the ruling is an "alarming"
departure from three decades of Supreme Court decisions. It is
the first time the court has outlawed a particular abortion procedure.
It is the first time the court has failed to require that a restriction
contain an exception for the mother's health. And it reflects
the departure from the high court of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,
the decisive vote in a 2000 ruling that rejected a similar ban
in Nebraska.
The decision emboldens abortion opponents to seek new state restrictions,
perhaps on other abortion methods that can be made to sound similarly
grisly. Or to use the vague language of the 2003 law to press
for prosecution of doctors who perform many types of abortions
after the 12th week.
What the decision doesn't do — though you might not know
it by the overheated reaction of some abortion rights advocates
— is wholly upend precedent or directly threaten the landmark
1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established abortion rights. Only
two of the nine justices say they favor overturning Roe.
The most immediate impact will be on second trimester abortions.
In 2001, when the most recent count was done, about 12% of the
1.3 million abortions in the USA were performed after the 12th
week of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research
group that supports abortion rights. It's unclear how many of
those are done with the now-banned procedure.
Amniocentesis, the best way to detect fetal abnormalities, is
generally performed after the 15th week of pregnancy. About 1,200
physicians throughout the country performed second-trimester abortions
in 2001; now those numbers will likely drop, giving women less
choice.
Late-term abortions are awful to contemplate, but no matter how
sincerely opponents believe the procedure is never medically necessary,
that's not based on science. Wednesday's ruling takes the court
in a troubling new direction, one that will harm some women or
limit their ability to deal with a profoundly personal decision.
USA Today
EDITORIAL: An erosion of abortion rights
Among the major flaws in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision
giving the federal government power to limit a woman’s right
to make decisions about her health was its fundamental dishonesty.
Under the modest-sounding guise of following existing precedent,
the majority opinion — written by Justice Anthony Kennedy
and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence
Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito — gutted a host of
thoughtful lower federal court rulings, not to mention past Supreme
Court rulings.
It severely eroded the constitutional respect and protection
accorded to women and the personal decisions they make about pregnancy
and childbirth. The justices went so far as to eviscerate the
crucial requirement, which dates to the 1973 ruling in Roe v.
Wade, that all abortion regulations must have an exception to
protect a woman’s health.
As far as we know, Mr. Kennedy and his four colleagues responsible
for this atrocious result are not doctors. Yet these five male
justices felt free to override the weight of medical evidence
presented during the several trials that preceded the Supreme
Court showdown. Instead, they ratified the politically based and
dangerously dubious Congressional claim that criminalizing the
intact dilation and extraction method of abortion in the second
trimester of pregnancy — the so-called partial-birth method
— would never pose a significant health risk to a woman.
In fact, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
has found the procedure to be medically necessary in certain cases.
Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the procedure
was good for women in that it would protect them from a procedure
they might not fully understand in advance and would probably
come to regret. This way of thinking, that women are flighty creatures
who must be protected by men, reflects notions of a woman’s
place in the family and under the Constitution that have long
been discredited, said a powerful dissenting opinion by Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David
Souter and Stephen Breyer.
Far from being compelled by the court’s precedents, Justice
Ginsburg aptly objected, the new ruling is so at odds with its
jurisprudence — including a concurring opinion by Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor (who has now been succeeded by Justice
Alito) when a remarkably similar state abortion ban was struck
down just seven years ago — that it should not have staying
power.
For anti-abortion activists, this case has never been about just
one controversial procedure. They have correctly seen it as a
wedge that could ultimately be used to undermine and perhaps eliminate
abortion rights eventually. The court has handed the Bush administration
and other opponents of women’s reproductive rights the big
political victory they were hoping to get from the conservative
judges Mr. Bush has added to the bench. It comes at a real cost
to the court’s credibility, its integrity and the rule of
law.
New York Times
EDITORIAL: Denying the Right to Choose
Among the major flaws in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision
giving the federal government power to limit a woman’s right
to make decisions about her health was its fundamental dishonesty.
Under the modest-sounding guise of following existing precedent,
the majority opinion — written by Justice Anthony Kennedy
and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence
Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito — gutted a host of
thoughtful lower federal court rulings, not to mention past Supreme
Court rulings.
It severely eroded the constitutional respect and protection
accorded to women and the personal decisions they make about pregnancy
and childbirth. The justices went so far as to eviscerate the
crucial requirement, which dates to the 1973 ruling in Roe v.
Wade, that all abortion regulations must have an exception to
protect a woman’s health.
As far as we know, Mr. Kennedy and his four colleagues responsible
for this atrocious result are not doctors. Yet these five male
justices felt free to override the weight of medical evidence
presented during the several trials that preceded the Supreme
Court showdown. Instead, they ratified the politically based and
dangerously dubious Congressional claim that criminalizing the
intact dilation and extraction method of abortion in the second
trimester of pregnancy — the so-called partial-birth method
— would never pose a significant health risk to a woman.
In fact, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
has found the procedure to be medically necessary in certain cases.
Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the procedure
was good for women in that it would protect them from a procedure
they might not fully understand in advance and would probably
come to regret. This way of thinking, that women are flighty creatures
who must be protected by men, reflects notions of a woman’s
place in the family and under the Constitution that have long
been discredited, said a powerful dissenting opinion by Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David
Souter and Stephen Breyer.
Far from being compelled by the court’s precedents, Justice
Ginsburg aptly objected, the new ruling is so at odds with its
jurisprudence — including a concurring opinion by Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor (who has now been succeeded by Justice
Alito) when a remarkably similar state abortion ban was struck
down just seven years ago — that it should not have staying
power.
For anti-abortion activists, this case has never been about just
one controversial procedure. They have correctly seen it as a
wedge that could ultimately be used to undermine and perhaps eliminate
abortion rights eventually. The court has handed the Bush administration
and other opponents of women’s reproductive rights the big
political victory they were hoping to get from the conservative
judges Mr. Bush has added to the bench. It comes at a real cost
to the court’s credibility, its integrity and the rule of
law.
Back to Top
Send this page to a friend!
