Copyright 2000 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Chicago
Sun-Times
June 29, 2000, THURSDAY, Late
Sports Final Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 22
LENGTH: 539 words
HEADLINE:
Abortion law overturned;
Court scraps Nebraska 'partial-birth'
procedure ban
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday severely
limited the power of states to ban a type of late-term abortion that had been
the favorite target of abortion opponents in recent years.
The court
ruled 5-4 against a Nebraska law prohibiting one of two procedures that
opponents call "partial-birth abortion." The court majority
called the law an "undue burden" on women's rights. Thirty other states have
similar laws, but the justices disagreed on how their ruling will affect them.
Doctors call the method outlawed in Nebraska dilation and extraction, or
D&X, because it involves partially extracting a fetus, legs first, through
the birth canal, cutting the skull and draining its contents.
A more
common procedure is dilation and evacuation, or D&E, in which an arm or leg
of a live fetus might be pulled into the birth canal during the operation.
The court said the Nebraska law, while purportedly aimed only at the
D&X method, could criminalize the D&E method as well.
"Using
this law, some present prosecutors and future attorneys general may choose to
pursue physicians who use D&E procedures, the most commonly used method of
performing previability second-trimester abortions," Justice Stephen Breyer
wrote for the court. "The result is an undue burden upon a woman's right to make
an abortion decision."
The law's other big flaw, Breyer wrote, was that
it lacked an exemption that would allow the D&X procedure if a doctor
concluded that it was the best way to preserve a woman's health.
Joining
Breyer were Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
O'Connor suggested in a concurring opinion that
states can ban some partial-birth abortions.
The
dissenters -- Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin
Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas -- seemed to think the 30
other states might not be able to come up with a law that would satisfy the
court majority.
Ginsburg and Breyer joined the court after a 1992 ruling
upholding abortion rights. Wednesday's ruling was their first on abortion.
The procedure at issue in the Nebraska case is used for some abortions
close to the point of viability, when a fetus is able to live outside the
uterus. Past abortion rulings make clear that states can take many steps to
protect fetal life once viability occurs, generally around the sixth month of
pregnancy.
Nebraska's law, along with those in Arkansas and Iowa, was
invalidated by a federal appeals court last year. But another federal appeals
court upheld partial-birth abortion bans in Wisconsin and Illinois.
An
appeal of that federal appeals court ruling still is pending before the justices
and probably will be set aside and sent back for more study when the court's
clerk issues new orders from the justices today.
Also Wednesday, the
court gave states greater leeway to restrict demonstrations by abortion
opponents outside health clinics. It upheld a Colorado law that bars people from
counseling, distributing leaflets or displaying signs within 8 feet of others
without their consent whenever they are within 100 feet of a health clinic
entrance.
On the Web: (Supreme Court decision) supct.law.cornell.edu/
supct/html/99-830.ZS.html
GRAPHIC: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
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LOAD-DATE: June 29, 2000
