posted on April 18, 2007 02:31:47 PM new
I'm THRILLED. This procedure never should have been allowed to have taken place to begin with.
But now, at least a HUGE moral wrong has been 'righted'.
NEXT - Putting LIMITS on the gestational age of the fetus so abortions can't be provided after that time.
===============
Supreme Court Upholds Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act
Fox News
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
WASHINGTON —
The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.
Click here to read the full Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.
The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.
It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how - not whether - to perform an abortion.
Abortion rights groups have said the procedure sometimes is the safest for a woman.
They also said that such a ruling could threaten most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, although government lawyers and others who favor the ban said there are alternate, more widely used procedures that remain legal.
The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions.
More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics.
Nearly 90 percent of those occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not affected by Wednesday's ruling.
Six federal courts have said the law that was in focus Wednesday is an impermissible restriction on a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.
The law bans a method of ending a pregnancy, rather than limiting when an abortion can be performed.
"Today's decision is alarming," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent. She said the ruling "refuses to take ...seriously" previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion.
Ginsburg said the latest decision "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."
She was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.
The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman's uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion.
Abortion opponents say the law will not reduce the number of abortions performed because an alternate method - dismembering the fetus in the uterus - is available and, indeed, much more common.
In 2000, the court with key differences in its membership struck down a state ban on partial-birth abortions. Writing for a 5-4 majority at that time, Justice Breyer said the law imposed an undue burden on a woman's right to make an abortion decision.
The Republican-controlled Congress responded in 2003 by passing a federal law that asserted the procedure is gruesome, inhumane and never medically necessary to preserve a woman's health.
That statement was designed to overcome the health exception to restrictions that the court has demanded in abortion cases.
But federal judges in California, Nebraska and New York said the law was unconstitutional, and three appellate courts agreed.
The Supreme Court accepted appeals from California and Nebraska, setting up Wednesday's ruling.
Kennedy's dissent in 2000 was so strong that few court watchers expected him to take a different view of the current case.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
Ann Coulter
[ edited by Linda_K on Apr 18, 2007 02:48 PM ]
posted on April 19, 2007 08:10:49 AM new
Giuliani stated on April 18: "The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion. I agree with it." But in 2000, Giuliani said he agreed with President Clinton's veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1997, saying then -- in response to a question about whether if he, as a senator, would have "vote[d] with the president or against the president" -- that he would have "vote[d] to preserve the option for women." On the February 5 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, when Giuliani expressed support for the current law banning "partial-birth abortion," co-host Sean Hannity pressed him about the apparent reversal. Giuliani attempted to reconcile his two positions by stating that he supports such bans only when they contain a "provision for the life of the mother." But as Media Matters noted, several federal bills banning "partial-birth abortion" proposed from 1997 through 2000 -- including the one Clinton vetoed in 1997 -- also provided "an exception to save a mother's life who is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury." So, while the presence of a life-of-the-woman exception was previously not enough to win Giuliani's support for a ban, such an exception is apparently now sufficient.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on April 19, 2007 08:42:41 AM new
No. 5 in Britt's 14 Points of Fascism:
""5. Rampant sexism
Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses."""
posted on April 19, 2007 09:41:30 AM new
This is one area I happen to agree with the Demomorons with.
I believe that it should be a choice between the woman and man. Not just the woman. No one, and I mean NO ONE has the right to tell them what they can and cannot do.
This anti-choice decision will only hurt the Republicans as well as independents, as it is very clear that the over-whelming majority of Americans support choice and are against anti-choice.
Remember, choice means in most cases you keep the baby or put it up for adoption. Less than .05% end in abortion.
In my case, if I make a baby, I am keeping it. But at the same time, it is not my place to force that opinion onto someone else.
The supreme court was dead wrong on this one.
.
.
.
If it's called common sense, why do so few Demomorons have it?
posted on April 19, 2007 09:48:04 AM new
Sorry to hear that Stonecold.
It's ONLY a womans choice...not in any way a mans. He has NO CHOICE.
But there are many limits that need to be applied in this 'abortion on demand' culture we find ourselves in now.
Banning this one procedure ONLY limits partially birthing a baby, that WOULD survive outside it's mothers womb and sucking it's brains out.
That is nothing short of murder. And if it was allowed to continue...then soon we'd find them giving 'rights' to these mothers to murder their babies a week or two after delivery.
Which, imo, we already are....but we're now labeling it 'post partum depression' and most who kill their babies never pay a penalty for doing so. The have found another excuse for their murder.
These procedures have been determined to NEVER be necessary. These women can decide at MUCH earlier times in their pregnancies to terminate their children.
ALL laws have some limits. Abortion should be no different, imo.
And it's not just a democrats position.....2/3 of Americans haven't approved of this procedure for OVER a decade.
posted on April 19, 2007 09:58:11 AM newIt's ONLY a womans choice...not in any way a mans. He has NO CHOICE.
You are 100% wrong on that. If I want to keep my child and the woman does not, she does NOT have the right to take that child away from me. If she don't want it. Fine, but have the baby, put it in my arms and then bow out.
In the same token, if he wants the abortion and she don't, she keeps the child.
The only time an abortion should ever take place is when both the mother and father agree. No one else has the right to force the decision upon them.
posted on April 19, 2007 10:00:42 AM new
"The options for all women -- particularly women facing serious medical conditions -- have been dramatically reduced. No longer can women and their physicians decide what's in their best interest. Now there's the added concern about whether what's in their best interest will be in violation of federal criminal statutes." Among opponents of the ban, gallows humor was the order of the day. As in: "I'd like to give you the best possible care," your doctor might say, "but first let me check with my lawyer."
posted on April 19, 2007 10:05:54 AM new
There are limits on most all laws.
Now our USSC has spoken in support of banning this ONE form of INHUMANE/grossly vile form of murdering a baby who could be born and given up for adoption.
Anyone want to show us just ONE case of a partial birth abortion saving the mother's life?
posted on April 19, 2007 10:09:46 AM new
Stonecold.
Sorry, but under the present laws...I am not wrong.
I wish I were. Because you and I ARE in agreement about how it SHOULD be. Men should have just as much say on the life or death of their own child.
But that's not the way the law is now.
Maybe something else, abortion related, that can and will be changed down the road. I'd sure support it being a duel decision...not giving the power/decision making to ONLY the women.
posted on April 19, 2007 05:09:38 PM new
Since a couple of those who post here and are pro-abortions are always asking if I'm going to adopt those unwanted babies.
They mke false accusations that the 'right', who in the majority oppose abortions, care so much about them then why aren't they willing to adopt them...care for them.
Well...here's further proof they DO and ARE willing to adopt those babies that would have been murdered.
taken from CNSnews.com, in part:
Another GOP former governor, Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, said Wednesday's ruling "sends a clear message that the United States values life and has no tolerance for this gruesome, abhorrent way to take a life."
"There is no place for partial-birth abortions in this country, and I am pleased the court upheld the law passed by Congress," he added.
Thompson's campaign website describes him as a "reliable conservative," saying he signed a ban on partial-birth abortion and that during his term as governor, abortions in Wisconsin decreased by 37 percent and adoptions increased by 22 percent.
posted on April 19, 2007 10:18:07 PM new
Larry King had President Clinton on his show this evening and this is what Clinton said on this issue.
KING: Some of the bases we will cover tonight.
The Supreme Court has said partial-birth abortion is wrong. The woman will not be blamed, but the doctor can get up to two years.
Thoughts?
B. CLINTON: Well, you know, I vetoed that bill twice. And I think it's a great victory for the political strategy of the anti- abortion movement. But I do not believe it's a pro-life decision.
KING: No?
B. CLINTON: I do not. Not a pro-life decision, because, let me remind you, when I vetoed that bill, I had standing in the White House with me an Evangelical Christian who had had the procedure who was pro-life, an Orthodox Jew who had had the provision who was pro-life, and another Christian who had been pro-choice.
All three women and their husbands and physicians -- but two of the three who had had the provision were pro-life. They did it because their children were -- I mean, their unborn children were severely hydrocephalic. They were certain to die either before, during or immediately after childbirth. And the doctors told them that if they did not reduce the size of these babies' heads -- which were swollen very high, very large -- that delivering them, even by cesarean section, might so damage the women that they might not be able to bear other children.
And they told me that they would otherwise never want to use this procedure, that no one would want to do this unless there was some medical necessity for it.
But it sounded gruesome. You could use -- you can label it and no one ever knew the facts. It was a perfect political strategy.
Who can be for partial-birth abortion?
It's a great line.
But the truth is, the doctors who did it and the women who agreed to have it -- as I said, I talked to two of them who were pro-life, anti-abortion. They did it because they thought it was a pro-life position. They thought it was the only way they could go on and have further children.
KING: So you don't see "Roe v. Wade" in danger?
B. CLINTON: No, I do think it's in danger. But all I'm saying is I don't believe that this was a victory for the pro-life forces. I think -- you know, I think abortion is a difficult decision. I agree with the "Roe v. Wade" decision because I don't think we ought to criminalize this. I think it's somewhat hypocritical, frankly, to make the doctors criminals and leave the mothers off.
KING: It's two parts to the crime.
B. CLINTON: You can't go around saying, well, this is killing and then you have an essential accomplice here, the mother. The mother can't do this -- I mean, the doc can't do it without the mother. But we're not going to charge them, we're only going to charge the doctor.
So they know how hard this is. This is -- but as a political strategy for the anti-abortion movement, it's a great triumph. And they do -- they have put "Roe vote. Wade" at risk. I just don't agree with the decision. And I don't think it's pro-life.
I think that the -- I vetoed those bills because I thought that if they passed it would make it harder for women with problem pregnancies to have other children.
posted on April 21, 2007 12:18:09 PM new
Here's another take on the decision:
Father Knows Best
Dr. Kennedy's magic prescription for indecisive women.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Wednesday, April 18, 2007, at 7:21 PM ET
Pro-life advocates in prayer on the steps of the Supreme Court. Click image to expand. Anti-abortion activists pray at the Supreme Court
The key to comprehending the Supreme Court's ruling today in Gonzales v. Carhart upholding the federal partial-birth abortion ban is a mastery not of constitutional law but of a literary type. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion is less about the scope of abortion regulation than an announcement of an astonishing new test: Hereinafter, on the morally and legally thorny question of abortion, the proposed rule should be weighed against the gauzy sensitivities of that iconic literary creature: the Inconstant Female.
Kennedy invokes The Woman Who Changed Her Mind not once, but twice today. His opinion is a love song to all women who regret their abortions after the fact, and it is in the service of these women that he justifies upholding the ban. Today's holding is a strange reworking of Taming of the Shrew, with Kennedy playing an all-knowing Baptista to a nation of fickle Biancas.
As a matter of law, the majority opinion today should have focused exclusively on what has changed since the high court's 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart. Stenberg struck down a Nebraska ban that was almost identical to the federal ban upheld today. That's why every court to review the ban found the federal law, passed in 2003, unconstitutional. What really changed in the intervening years was the composition of the court: Sandra Day O'Connor, who voted to strike down the ban in 2000, is gone. Samuel Alito, who votes today to uphold it, is here.
What hasn't changed is that Anthony Kennedy finds partial-birth abortion really disgusting. We saw that in his dissent in Stenberg. That's what animates and drives his decision. His opinion blossoms from the premise that if all women were as sensitive as he is about the fundamental awfulness of this procedure, they'd all refuse to undergo it. Since they aren't, he'll decide for them.
Kennedy halfheartedly attempts to distinguish Stenberg from Gonzales. Sparing us his usual lofty opening sonnet to freedom and liberty and truth and good lighting, he opens with the terse insistence that this case is not Stenberg: The act is both "more specific" and "more precise" than its Nebraskan precursor. The court can uphold it without revisiting Stenberg. That's nice for Kennedy, since he is one of the authors of the famous peaen to precedent in Casey that was the basis, in that 1992 case, for upholding Roe v. Wade.
Rather than admitting that his opinion today is at odds with Stenberg, Kennedy walks his reader through the horrors of the intact dilation and extraction procedure Congress has banned. This discussion goes on for five pages, and includes, for balance, an "abortion doctor's clinical description" of the abortion at issue, and that of a nurse who witnessed the procedure being "performed on a 26 1/2 week fetus." (The nurse's version: "the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head and the baby's arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he think's he's going to fall."
Kennedy contends Congress fixed the problems with the Nebraska ban in two vital ways: by making factual findings, and by narrowing the definition of the procedure such that doctors of "ordinary intelligence" know which operations will be illegal and which will not.
And then Kennedy quickly returns to the business of grossing us out. With a stirring haiku about how "respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child," the justice interpolates himself between every one of those mothers and every child she might ever bear. Without regard for the women who feel they made the right decision in terminating a pregnancy, he frets for those who changed their minds. ("It seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained." (The "infant," not the "fetus." As both the dissenters and my colleague Emily Bazelon have pointed out, this portrayal of a rampant epidemic of regretful women may or may not be scientifically accurate. (The American Psychological Association doesn't think so.) But even if the numbers of women who would truly choose differently if they could choose again are larger than most of the medical literature indicates, one might question whether such women should be the pole star of national abortion policy.
Nobody disputes that whether or not they decide to go through with an abortion, women face a heart-wrenching choice. But for Kennedy only those women who regret the decision to abort illuminate some deeper truth. And Kennedy's solution for these flip-flopping women is elegant. Protect them from the truth. "Any number of patients facing imminent surgical procedures would prefer not to hear all details," he concedes. "It is, however, precisely this lack of information concerning the way the fetus will be killed that is of legitimate concern to the state." In Kennedy's view, if pregnant women only knew how abhorrent the procedure was, they'd always opt to avoid it. But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points out in dissent, Kennedy doesn't propose giving women more information about partial-birth abortion procedures. He says it's up to the Congress and the courts to substitute their judgment and ban the procedures altogether. ("I'm sorry Bianca, there is a procedure out there that may be safer for you, but some day, you will thank me for sparing you from it."
Then Kennedy sorrowfully returns to the Indecisive Women. "It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound, when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form."
One core proposition that's held true from Roe v. Wade to Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Stenberg was that abortion regulations, in order to be constitutional, required an exception if the mother's health was in danger. For the first time today, Kennedy determines that a court's factual determination about whether some procedure may be necessary to protect the mother's health can just evaporate in the face of "medical uncertainty." That turns both Casey and Stenberg on their heads. After today, "medical uncertainty does not foreclose the exercise of legislative power." And even where some of the building blocks of that "uncertainty" are patently untrue. Henceforth if there is uncertainty about the health consequences of the ban, the tie will go to the banners.
Kennedy devotes the remainder of his opinion to taking cover under standing doctrine. "Standing" to bring suit is the Roberts court's trapdoor to keep pesky litigants away from the courthouse. On this front, too, Kennedy turns Casey and Stenberg on their heads with nary a backward glance. His opinion pretty much unfurls a roadmap for states seeking to enact broader bans on abortion. As Ginsburg points out in her dissent, the court's rationale for upholding the ban on intact D&Es would support a ban on the (far more common) nonintact D&E as well.
It's hard to fathom why Kennedy has so much more sympathy for the women who changed their minds about abortions than for those who did not. His concern for Inconstant Females might be patronizing in any other jurist. Coming from him, it's brilliantly ironic. Kennedy is, after all, America's Hamlet. The man who famously worried that "sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line," will long be remembered as the living incarnation of agony and indecision, And today he seamlessly rewrites his Stenberg dissent as a majority opinion that blasts his earlier Casey vote to its core.
I'm no psychologist but in light of today's Gonzales opinion one has to wonder: Is all of Kennedy's tender concern over those flip-flopping women really just some kind of weird misplaced justification for his flip-flopping self?
_____________________
Dogs have owners, cats have staff.
posted on April 21, 2007 12:42:21 PM new
I am one who would FULLY support abortions being limited in many MORE ways.
I was THRILLED to see this ONE USSC decision that only stops the PROCEDURE from being used....NOT the abortions.
I do hope that is in our future.
Meanwhile it appears to me that the pro-abortion supporters support the murder of babies able to survive outside their mothers wombs.....just because they DEMAND they be killed.
Would they also support killing these babies at one week, two weeks, three weeks? I'd certainly hope not...but that IS what they're supporting when they believe abortions should have NO limits on them.
And they're supporting NARAL and Planned Parenthood who MAKE ALL SORTS of money off those willing to take human life.....just because they demand it.
posted on April 21, 2007 05:54:43 PM newThe Ginsburg Worldview
(David Limbaugh) (4/20) -
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart illustrates the moral depths and quagmires of irrationality to which the political and cultural left in this country have descended.
posted on April 22, 2007 06:22:48 AM new
"These procedures have been determined to NEVER be necessary. These women can decide at MUCH earlier times in their pregnancies to terminate their children."
Oh really? I am surprised that with all your medical experience, you are not considering conditions like gestational diabetes, heart conditions, pre-eclampsia where the mother's blood pressure goes sky high due to her pregnancy---all of which can occur or get worse late in a pregnancy. These are only a few of the life-threatening conditions which might indicate a late term abortion is needed to save the mother's life. It happens every day.
posted on April 22, 2007 07:09:21 AM new
More drool, """And ginsburg sounds like the typical RADICAL feminists....just like those from NOW. """
Too bad you're so totally incapable of learning anything....are you so lazy you couldn't read the thread on feminisim..or just too stupid to comprehend it..or just so hateful that you're blind to what these "radicals" have done for a pathetic scared, weak, spineless, piece of crap like you......
posted on April 23, 2007 12:54:38 PM new
The five judges were CATLICKS....foisting off their religious beliefs on the country so the Dope wouldn't excommunicate them or refuse them their Keebler wafers on Sunday !
Are YOU a Bunghole?