Nasty business, that. Good thing to get rid of.

Abortion is a sick procedure no matter how it is performed. Democrats went to the mat again and again for this particularly monstrous procedure. I hope they are proud of themselves.

Excellent news! It's a start.

I guess Kenendy is only 95% evil...

Is partial birth abortion considered to be violent by Mr. Obama?

Will the race pimps Jesse and Bookman chime in on this, or, are they still in the back room counting $$ after their latest media blitz?

US courts need to decide once and for all if a fetus is a life, or not. Many want to have it both ways, it is a life if a pregnant woman is killed, or if there is a miscarriage, but it isnt if you want to murder it.

Bravo! for doing away with this grisly procedure.

After the tragic loss of life earlier this week, this is very good timing for this great bit of news.

Fetuses everywhere are celebrating (twins and triplets are high-fiving each other)

When Kennedy writes, "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," is he saying that they have indeed demonstrated that it is unconstitutional in some number of cases?

I'm no fan of abortion of any type, but being a non-lawyer,this language bothers me. Can a law be upheld if it is "sometimes unconstitutional"? Am I being naive if I feel that a law is either constitutional or unconstitutional. Like being pregnant - you either are or are not pregnant, you're never "a large fraction" pregnant.

That's how I see things - can anybody shed some scholarly light on this?

How many of you condemning this procedure have actually been part of one? I have. My first was when a baby was literally stuck in the mother's pelvis and there was nothing else that could've been done. Everyone was upset -- but it was clearly the best thing that could be done. The mother's reproductive capacity was saved -- she later gave birth to healthy twins after being properly medically monitored unlike the previous pregnancy.

None of these procedures I witnessed over the years were gratuitous and all were done to preserve the mother's health, sometimes including her life. None of the aborted fetuses were unwanted but, in every case, something had gone tragically wrong.

You are, in my opinion, the callous ones disrespectful of life.

Late term abortions are either legal or not. To allow some types of procedures and not others is a loss for anyone.

This ruling will not eliminate abortions. The only difference is that now all fetuses will be torn apart (D&C) in the womb instead of punctured in the brain.

Marla, the statute in question provides this:

This subsection [imposing penalties] does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.

Aparently Marla has never heard of a C Section.

Marla,

Why couldn't the doctor have done a C-section and pulled the baby out that way? My tailbone sticks way too far into my pelvis, so I can't deliver any baby vaginally. Therefore, I am forced to have c-sections.

It makes me want to vomit to think of the pain that poor baby, full term I'm guessing, went through having his/her brains sucked out when he/she was still alive. I would have demanded the doctor break my pelvis bone rather than kill my baby. I would give my life for the life of my kids.

The 'health of the mother' phrase has always been used as a means of creating a technicality which could be exploited. Note that those who use this phrase are careful not to use terminology that says the 'physical health' of the mother.

"Health of the mother' is interpreted by the abortion lobby in the very broadest sense, including mental ailments such as 'severe depression' which cannot be proven with physical evidence and must be taken at the word of the abortion provider. This gives the provider wide latitude to declare a mother's 'health' in jeopardy, so that the abortion may be carried out despite what the law intended.

I'm concerned about how this was approached. From what I have gathered from links at Instapundit, this ruling completely disregarded the fact that the ban was based on the commerce clause... which apparently was the right thing to do from a legalese standpoint.

My concern is this: if there are a bunch of BS laws Congress has given itself the power to legislate based on this overly broad commerce clause, will we miss an opportunity to drastically reduce its power just to uphold the ban?

My other concern is, if it's a bad idea to use the commerce clause to enact laws we don't like, why is it a good idea to use it to enact laws we do like? I'd like to see abortion be illegal... including for rape and incest, but not necessarily for the life of the mother... but I'd like to see it done right.

Marla, I think you are lying. Why are you lying?
==============================

Abortion is a very, very terrible procedure. It sickens me also to know that most abortions are done for convenience. It is the new method of birth control. I wish people would discuss this on the merits and morality of abortion and not on the political. Women are sometimes portrayed as the mature responsible ones of the species, but there are millions of dead babies at the hands of mature responsible women. So sad. ww

Thank God for this Supreme Court decision. May the future babies rejoice. Thank God for putting President Bush in the office for the two Justices Alito and Roberts in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas. Thanks to Justice Kennendy for doing the right thing. Hope he will continue to support future life and family decisions.
Hope, Stevens retires in June and a third conservative is nominated by President Bush.

Thank God for this Supreme Court decision. May the future babies rejoice. Thank God for putting President Bush in the office and thus appointing the two Justices Alito and Roberts in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas. Thanks to Justice Kennendy for doing the right thing. Hope he will continue to support future life and family decisions.
Hope, Stevens retires in June and a third conservative is nominated by President Bush.

I found it interesting that Kennedy wrote this opinion and that he included some graphic details and testimony about parital birth abortion. One nurse testified that the fetus having been partially delivered was grasping with its tiny hands until the head was punctured when it twiched with a start then went limp. He also includes some additional graphic content about normal abortions stating that normally the fetus is torn apart within the uterus and extracted in 10 to 15 pieces. It seems clear to me that Kennedy was including this to indicate his disgust with abortions.

Kim P.:
From your original post "If a late term pregnancy was so harmful to the mother's health, then the mother should just deliver the baby and give the baby a chance to survive." are you saying she should give birth even if it will kill her?

BarneyG2000:
D&C is not the only remaining option -- how about abortion via C-section?

Not that my opinion matters (I think only women should have the final say in this), but I think that PBA should be an option of very last resort (i.e., given extreme circumstances), but should still remain an option.

ij, do you see mantis's post at 12:15 PM. I think this point is not at controversy. What still could be at controversy is the physician's judgment with respect to threat to mother's life. I'm surprised there isn't language requiring two physicians, if only to protect them, forget about the wee human of such potential.
==================================

ijosha,

The point I was making refers to the fact that a PBA pulls the entire baby out except for the head. If the doctor can get the shoulders out, which is the widest part of the baby, then surely, the mother can survive having the head pulled out as well. Besides, PBA's require the head to remain in the birth canal for legal, not medical, reasons. If all the baby were delivered and then killed, it would be murder. However, if the head remains in the birth canal, then it's still an unborn fetus, and, therefore, can be killed at will.

Hence, my point: PBA's aren't about the health of the mother; they're about legally killing an unwanted baby.

kim: thanks... but I was asking if what KP stated was in actuallity how she felt given those circumstances, not what the actual law now states. Good point about the "two physicians". Given how most see it as an execution, maybe it should be a jury of 12.

Kim P: thanks -- sorry for my confusion (maybe if you had said something like "... should just complete the delivery of the baby ..." I would have better understood).

Obama has a comment up on his blog
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/group/ObamaHQ/

Kim P...you nailed it! If the shoulders are clear, its BORN! They're just committing murder at that point!

Uh, isn't head biggest?
===============

It certainly can be.

kim:

A baby's head is definitely the heaviest part of the baby. Additionally, the bones in babies' heads can shift to allow for the birth process, which is why many are born with cone heads. The shoulders, however, are the widest part of the baby. Take a look at this picture. Note how the baby's shoulders are wider than the diameter of the baby's head. The point I was making is that if the baby's feet, legs, torso, arms and shoulders can be delivered safely without any harm to the mother, then why can't the baby's head also be delivered without any harm to the mother? The answer is, it can. Therein lies the deceit of this awful process.

"Note how the baby's shoulders are wider than the diameter of the baby's head."

I disagree Kim. The DIAMETER of that baby's head is definitely larger than his shoulders. Now if you meant to say that the WIDTH of the baby's head is larger, then you are probably correct, but the DIAMETER is definitely larger than the shoulders. When it comes down to it though, I don't even think the WIDTH of that babie's head is larger, or at least much larger, than the shoulders, and I believe the shoulders can be compacted and scrunched in a lot easier.

D-Hoggs, the diameter is technically the width.

Oops, my apologies, I am thinking circumference, still in food coma from lunch!

I too think Marla is a phony. The partial birth abortion advocates are full of crap. The AMA says there would be no instance where the life of the mother is at stake.

I hope Bush gets to nominate one more SCJ. We desperately need one.

D-Hoggs, not a problem. I figured that's what you meant.

This is a great day for the pro-life movement. We have Senator Sam Brownback to thank for rejecting the Miers nomination and getting Justice Alito on the court.

Psycheout, I wonder just how you and John Hawkins "know" how Harriet Miers would have voted on this case?

Are you psychics or something? Or just hallucinating?

Let me get this straight...you don't want the govt interfering with your right to how many or what kind of gun (an object) you own...
But you have no problem with the govt interfering with the health and reproductive system of women.

Please...someone give me some valid statistics on how common this is?...

Yep..women are going to flock to the party that supports this decision...after all..they want someone to force them to do things...

oh yeah psych..as "pro-life" ..can I assume you oppose capital punishment and our ocupation of Iraq?

..or do you pick and choose what life is important?

This was a very good Supreme Court decision that establishes that this gruesome procedure, sometimes used on later term babies, is completely unacceptable.

pwnt.

http://www.mahablog.com/2007/04/18/late-term-confusion/

nogo said:

"Let me get this straight...you don't want the govt interfering with your right to how many or what kind of gun (an object) you own...
But you have no problem with the govt interfering with the health and reproductive system of women."

In order for your logic to work, you must first dehumanize the baby in the womb, and pretend that it is only the rights of one person that is affected by an abortion. In fact, this unborn person has no more significance to you than an inanimate object, such as a gun. That is sick. Good luck with yourself.

So, how many of you who are criticizing Marla have any real medical training in childbirth and delivery? Any of you make it past high school? I only ask because you appear to be ignorant and lacking in critical thinking skills.

You all watch tv movies and listen to rightwing bs and decide that you're experts on all the things that can happen during a pregnancy.

You are not. You're idiots. If you looked at the facts you'd know that women are not getting abortions of convenience at 8 months. Only bigoted idiots would think so.

But women can face life-threatening and health threatening crisises at any time, even the last month of a pregnancy. And this finding has now put the health of those women at risk.

You callous, self-serving fools can congratulate yourselves all you want because you think you're "saving babies". You are not. You're killing women who want to be mothers.

Read Justice Ginsberg's dissent.

roooth:

At least we, apparently unlike you, have the reading comprehension skills to see that an exception was provided for instances where the physical life of the mother is endangered. But don't let the facts get in the way of your faux concern for mothers' "health." The argument can and has been made that abortions themselves are many times more dangerous to women than pregnancy. But again, that conclusion requires "critical thinking."

Moreover, read this if you're capable of it:

No evidence had been presented to Congress or a court showing any case in which a partial-birth abortion had been necessary or even safer as a procedure. Nevertheless, Justice Breyer was willing to strike down the bill simply because it was conceivable that this procedure, in certain instances, might be safer: No parts of the fetus would be left behind in the body, where they could cause infections. But by this reckoning, the safer procedure by far would be the "live-birth abortion," as practiced in Christ Hospital, in Oak Lawn, Illinois, and other hospitals: A child is simply delivered whole and put aside, in another room, to die.

Justice Scalia aptly rejoined, in the Stenberg case, that grafting a health exception on to this kind of bill was a requirement that extinguished the bill itself: "The Court must know (as most state legislatures banning this procedure have concluded) that demanding a 'health exception'--which requires the abortionist to assure himself that, in his expert medical judgment, this method is, in the case at hand, marginally safer than others (how can one prove the contrary beyond a reasonable doubt?)--is to give live-birth abortion free rein."

There had been ample testimony in the congressional hearings, from fetologists and doctors who performed abortions, that no affliction faced by a pregnant woman would be remedied by a partial-birth abortion. Congress revisited those hearings in order to meet the concerns of the Court. With its own reading of the record and its own assessment of the evidence, the Congress then declared, "There exists substantial record evidence upon which Congress has reached its conclusion that a ban on partial-birth abortion is not required to contain a 'health' exception, because the facts indicate that a partial-birth abortion is never necessary to preserve the health of a woman, poses serious risks to a woman's health, and lies outside the standard of medical care."

But by the time the bill on partial-birth abortion was presented for the third time, the opposition had lined up its own array of professionals, ready to affirm the safety, value, and redeeming goodness of partial-birth abortions. And so, there were statements duly offered in opposition to the act from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a cluster of groups with an evident political coloration, allied to governments or to advocacy groups: the American Public Health Association, the California Medical Association, the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.

Judge Richard Conway Casey, considering the constitutionality of the bill in the district court in New York, offered a scrupulous review of the testimony, and he acknowledged that the defenders of partial-birth abortion were never actually able to bring forth evidence to show that the procedure was necessary because it was demonstrably safer than any alternative form of abortion.

As Casey summed up his judgment, in language not at all shaded, many of the "purported reasons" offered in support of the medical necessity of the procedure were simply not credible; "rather they [were] theoretical or false." In no case, he said, involving "maternal health conditions" could the professionals opposing the bill "point to a specific patient or actual circumstances in which D&X [dilation and extraction, or partial-birth abortion] was necessary to protect a woman's health. Hadley Arkes, "This Heartbreaking Court," First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life Oct. 2006

Medical doctor testimony on the issue:

"...partial-birth abortion employs techniques overtly dangerous to the mother, including blind instrumentation within a large vascular uterus and internal podalic version (turning the baby inside the uterus). The latter technique as an elective procedure was abandoned by the medical community fifty years ago because of danger to both mother and child.

In this age of medical litigation, any doctor who would elect to invade a woman's reproductive tract in this way, even with her permission, is putting her reproductive health and his litigation status on the block. Reproductive-tract injuries go for a big price, even with informed consent. (The patient cannot sign away her constitutional right to sue.) It is certainly less risky simply to induce labor, effecting vaginal delivery.

In light of the admission of Fredric Frigoletto, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), that there is a major lack of medical data on this abortion technique (only in Jan., 1997 did ACOG even dignify it with a formal name, intact dilation and extraction), both patient and physician should be aware that this is a maverick procedure, outside the scope of standard medical practice.

JOSEPH L. DECOOK, M.D.

Holland Gynecology & Obstetrics, PC

Holland, Mich.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists could identify no circumstances where a partial birth abortion "would be the only option" to save or preserve the health of the woman. The American Medical Association found that "there does not appear to be any identical situation in which intact D&X is the only appropriate procedure to induce abortion."

Wesley J. Smith, The Assault on Medical Ethics in America The Assault on Medical Ethics in America (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2000)

rooth, perhaps you can tell us why Marla is lying? It's actually important to know. It would be highly instructive to all concerned, especially the liars.
==============================

If the woman's health is so in danger at the end of a pregnancy....there is something that can be done....it's called a C-Section!!! It is done all the time. I agree with you, that the reason that they wanted to continue this horrible act...vaacumming the brains out of babies...ugh....was to get rid of the baby. What in the world do the people who do these type of procedures think?? They KNOW it is a human being. Thanks

Justice Ginsburg found, in her dissent:

*Congress found that '[t]here is no credible medical evidence that partial-birth abortions are safe or are safer than other abortion procedures. But the congressional record includes letters from numerous individual physicians stating that pregnant women's health would be jeopardized under the Act, as well as statements from nine professional associations, including ACOG, the American Public Health Association, and the California Medical Association, attesting that intact D&E carries meaningful safety advantages over other methods.

*No comparable medical groups supported the ban. In fact, all of the government's own witnesses disagreed with many of the specific congressional findings.

So the law was not based on the consensus opinion of the medical community, and has no real basis in medicine and science at all.

A D&X is a medical procedure normally performed in the 2ND TRIMESTER of pregnancy, in pre-viable fetuses. These "late-term" abortions are not third trimester/viable, as many of the commenters here have suggested.

When viability has been achieved in the THIRD TRIMESTER (24 weeks plus), both mother and baby can sometimes be saved and, in the case of of life-threatening medical condition, a cesarian can be performed. But when the fetus is not viable (less than 24 weeks) this is not an good option, and merely mutilates the uterus to no good end (and risks future fertility, as well as the life of the mother and any future pregnancies via uterine rupture).

Second trimester abortions are not usually performed for "birth control"; most of them are for maternal health issues or fetal malformation/genetic disease issues.

There was a time when medical decisions were between a patient and a doctor. And there was a time when conservatives supported privacy and believed that the government should saty out of our private lives. Remember Goldwater?

And what is particularly disturbing about this decision is the suggestion that laws are OK, even if they are UNCONSTITUTIONAL, if only a small number of people are affected. Doesn't the constitution apply to everyone?

dr. luba (FACOG)

P.S. In most babies, and especially preterm babies, the head is absolutely the largest part of the body. That is why breech deliveries are so dangerous--the body delivers first, and then the head may get stuck. When this happens, the baby usually dies. Most breeches are delivered by elective cesarian section.

In very large full term babies (e.g. diabetic moms), the shoulders can be quite large, and can get stuck after the delivery of the head. This is quite rare, and can usually be overcome by various maneuvers, including breaking a shoulder bone.

Forgive me if I do not consider Justice Ginsberg's dissent the last word on the subject. You on the Left are capable if rationalizing anything. You are leading us down the dark road to infanticide.

Did you notice that Ginsberg rallies for partial birth abortion on the grounds that it sometimes [supposedly] "carries meaningful safety advantages over other methods [of abortion]? In other words, she is not making an argument based on the health or safety of mother or child at all but rather on the idea that PBA is sometimes a more efficient method of killing an unborn, and unwanted, child. The grotesqueness of the procedure has no bearing as far as she is concerned. Big surprise. She would make an excellent Nazi.

Her opinion contradicts the weight of medical evidence to the contrary.

You people should be ashamed. You cry over a baby seal being clubbed, or a polar bear "getting stuck" on an ice flow, but shed no tears for the wanton destruction of humankind.

"And what is particularly disturbing about this decision is the suggestion that laws are OK, even if they are UNCONSTITUTIONAL, if only a small number of people are affected. Doesn't the constitution apply to everyone?"

No, what is particularly disturbing is the unconstitutionality of the federal government striking down state law on a routine basis. In this instance, they at least made a small lurch in the right direction. Leftists cannot bear to let "we the people" govern ourselves, for they are far more enlightened and intelligent than we, don't you know. The will of the Left must be imposed by edict, for the "common good" as they see it.

All i've got to say about this is that I'm glad that the law has been made to stop PBA...it's such horrid form of birth control.
There are so many people out there who can't have their own children and want to adopt a baby of their own. Your not only killing a human being, but preventing someone else's chance at happiness because of your own selfishness.

I don't agree with any type of abortion at all. If the child doesn't have a right to live, then neither does the mother.

Passing this ban is one of the best things that Bush has done. I have one thing to say about the mothers that have this done. Its murder. If you dont want kids, stay off your back, or be responsible. To the Doctors that choose to be murderers...as far as I know...you take an oath. Dr's are supposed to help people, not MURDER people. Oh...thats right...you dont consider them people because they havent taken a breath yet." Is that right? It's ok though...they are in a better place, and some day...some day your judgment day will come, and you will see. There is only one use for people like you. God help you.

it is not right for people to have abortion you are killing a human bean that is inside of you and waitting to have a family and to get to know who made them the babys have feelings to even though you don't know it. in a matter of fact if you are going to do a abortion WHY HAVING SEX and get pregnant if you are going to do a horrible thing like that people might not even talk to you cause of the thing you done well that is my opinion