Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
The Washington
Post
September 23, 1999, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A09
LENGTH: 1154 words
HEADLINE:
'Infanticide' Act Seen as Model to Fight Late-Term Abortion
BYLINE: William Claiborne, Washington Post Staff Writer
DATELINE: ST. LOUIS, Sept. 22
BODY:
Abortion rights advocates
said today they fear that a new Missouri law criminalizing one type of late-term
abortion by terming it "infanticide" will be the prototype for a nationwide
effort to get around federal court injunctions against late-term abortion bans
in other states.
Their fears appeared at least partly founded when
Missouri state Sen. Ted House (D) said that since last Thursday night, when the
bill outlawing what abortion opponents call "partial-birth"
abortions briefly went into effect, his office has heard from
legislators in a half-dozen states where the procedure had been banned and the
bans were blocked in court.
House, one of the bill's sponsors, did not
name the states, but said, "I've had numerous requests for the bill and there
obviously is widespread interest." He said he assumed that the interest stemmed
from Missouri's unique approach of not defining the procedure in terms of
abortion, but instead prohibiting the killing of an infant by any overt act
performed when it is born or partially born. Such an act constitutes the felony
crime of infanticide under the new law. "It draws the line between infanticide
and abortion. This approach has never been litigated," House said.
The
Infants' Protection Act was passed by the Missouri legislature in May, but
vetoed by Gov. Mel Carnahan (D). Last Thursday night, the state Senate voted to
override the veto and the law briefly went into effect. But on Friday, Planned
Parenthood took the issue to federal court, and a temporary injunction against
enforcement of the law was issued by midday.
The law defines a partially
born infant as one whose head is outside the mother in a cephalic separation or
its navel is visible in a breech delivery. In a partial-birth abortion, a
pregnant women's cervix is dilated and after the fetus has partially emerged it
is killed by inserting a suction tube into its skull and removing the contents.
Including Missouri, 30 states have passed partial-birth abortion bans,
and in 21 of them the bans have faced legal challenges. In 18 states, federal
courts have blocked them with either permanent injunctions or temporary
restraining orders; in one an injunction was stayed pending an appeal, and in
two others enforcement of the laws has been limited by federal court order or
the state attorney general.
Many of the state bans were struck down
because the courts found that their definitions of partial-birth abortion were
so broadly drawn that they challenged the legality of abortions clearly
protected by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.
Kate Michelman, president
of the Washington-based National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League,
said the state legislators who have expressed interest in copying Missouri's law
are "grasping at any version they think might be able to make its way down the
judicial pipeline to overturning Roe v. Wade."
"It's another generation
in their relentless attempts to criminalize abortion," Michelman said. "I'm not
surprised there's so much interest in it in other legislatures, because those
who oppose abortion are determined to find a way to overturn Roe v. Wade."
Lou C. DeFeo, executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, an
agency of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Missouri, dismissed criticism of the new
law as an attempt to generate "hysteria" over a measure that does nothing but
"draw the line between infanticide and legal abortion."
All of the other
states approached the issue by trying to regulate an abortion procedure, and the
courts held the definitions to be too vague, said DeFeo, who wrote the first
draft of the law.
"We learned from that experience, and in very
anatomically precise language we drew the red line where a child is born. If the
navel is exposed, if the head is exposed, we have a person, and you can't
purposefully kill the baby. It's as simple as that," DeFeo said.
He said
the reason the bill was necessary is that "we don't know the point at which the
child has the protection of the law during birth and we should know that." DeFeo
also said that if he and the state legislators had drafted a bill that attempted
to regulate abortion in such a way that would preclude partial-birth procedures,
it would be held unconstitutional.
But critics of the Missouri law say
it is even more broadly drawn than partial-birth bans enacted in other states,
and that the use of the emotive term "infanticide" will put doctors at abortion
clinics at increased risk of violence by antiabortion extremists.
"It is
an open invitation to violence," said Janet Benshoof, president of the New
York-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, who has served as counsel for
many of the partial-birth lawsuits. "This is the first time there's been a green
light for antiabortion terrorists to claim that their acts of violence were
justifiable."
Abortion providers here said that the veto override
Thursday night had an immediate "chilling effect" on their patients, who had to
wait in clinics Friday morning to see whether the law would be blocked in court.
Paula Gianino, president of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region
Inc., which operates an abortion clinic here, said all procedures were suspended
for the half day before the court blocked the ban. She said pregnant women were
crying because they feared a prolonged shutdown like the one in Wisconsin last
year before that state's partial-birth abortion ban was blocked by a federal
court order.
"It had an extraordinarily chilling effect," said Gianino,
"because I don't think any of them thought this would happen in Missouri." She
said no partial-birth abortions were scheduled--and, indeed, Planned Parenthood
says that it has found no record of the procedure ever having been performed in
the state. But Gianino said the clinic briefly suspended all operations because
it was felt staff members might be held criminally liable if they performed any
kind of abortion.
Gianino said the clinic had resumed normal operations
since the injunction was issued, but added, "The uncertainty is still there,
because it's not a given that the court will permanently prevent the law from
going into effect."
U.S. District Judge Scott Wright today extended his
temporary restraining order until March 27, when a trial is scheduled on Planned
Parenthood's request for a permanent injunction.
House dismissed as
"smoke screens" and "scare tactics" the abortion rights advocates' assertions
that the Missouri law is so broad that it would apply to cases in which a
cancerous uterus is removed with a live fetus inside it.
"Read the bill,
it's clear. It requires an overt act with the purpose of causing the death of a
baby after it's born," House said. "This bill isn't even about abortion, because
abortion is done inside the mother."
Missouri state Sen. Ted House:
"I've had numerous requests for the bill."
LOAD-DATE:
September 23, 1999 
