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President George W. Bush's new, conservative Supreme Court delivered a victory to anti-abortion activists yesterday when it upheld the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Act, which outlaws a specific, relatively rare procedure usually carried out on pregnant women reaching the end of the second trimester.
The issue has been mired in controversy for years, with anti-abortion activists arguing that the operation, which involves crushing the foetus's head, is unspeakably barbaric while their opponents say it can, in certain circumstances, be the least traumatic way of ending a pregnancy and causing least damage to the health of the mother.
Six courts have ruled that the 2003 federal law banning the procedure was unconstitutional because it did not provide an exception to protect the life and health of the mother. It seems likely that the Supreme Court would have made a similar ruling until last year, when Sandra Day O'Connor retired and was replaced by Samuel Alito, a hardline conservative. That change shifted the balance on the Court to a 5-4 majority generally hostile towards abortion laws. Before Alito's appointment, John Roberts, a conservative, replaced the late William Rehnquist as Chief Justice.
The ruling yesterday was widely expected, but that made it no less likely to restoke the fires of the abortion debate and heighten speculation that this Supreme Court might one day strike down Roe vs Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that gave women the constitutional right to seek an abortion in the first place.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the procedure was "laden with the power to devalue human life" and was likely to traumatise women who underwent it.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court's sole woman justice, called the decision "alarming".
- INDEPENDENT
