Supreme Court Agrees to Review Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban; Court Should Reverse Course Says Americans United for Life

22 February 2006

Today the Supreme Court agreed to review whether the federal partial-birth abortion ban is unconstitutional. The ban, which passed the Congress with overwhelming support in 2003, has never taken effect because of three ongoing court challenges. This case, Gonzales v. Carhart, is the first of the three cases to make it to the Court.

Partial-birth abortion is the process of partially delivering an unborn child alive, then terminating the child by collapsing the skull using a method that sucks out the child's brain through a hole created at the base of the skull.

In 2000 the Supreme Court ruled in Stenberg v. Carhart that state bans on partial-birth abortion are unconstitutional unless they include a broad health exception-one so broad that even emotional and familial issues are considered exceptions to the ban. The current federal ban before the Court does not include this broad health exception and has been ruled unconstitutional by the lower courts. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the deciding vote in Stenberg v. Carhart. She has since retired and has been replaced by Justice Samuel Alito. This will be the first abortion case on the Supreme Court which Justice Alito will hear.

"We are heartened by the Court's willingness to revisit this issue," said Denise M. Burke, vice president & legal director with Americans United for Life. "We are hopeful that the Court will reverse course and repudiate its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart which sanctioned this type of infanticide just as it has previously renounced decisions approving racial segregation and the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II without due process of law."

Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel with Americans United for Life stated, "We hope the Court will use this opportunity to finally reexamine its broad health exception requirement that demands abortion must be allowed at any time of pregnancy for any reason including 'emotional health' and 'familial health'.

Forsythe continued, "The Court's extreme definition of 'health' has come to mean abortion-on-demand at any time of pregnancy- something the American public just does not support. A ban on partial-birth abortion is supported by 70 percent of the public. What the Court should do here is to allow the will of the people to stand."

If the ban is upheld by the Court, it will be the nation's first federal abortion prohibition.

For interviews or for more information, contact Daniel McConchie with Americans United for Life at 312-492-7234.

Americans United for Life (AUL) is the leading public-interest law firm dedicated to providing legal expertise and strategy in the field of life-affirming legislation, litigation, and public education. Headquartered in Chicago, Ill., AUL's fields of legal expertise include abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, physician- assisted suicide, destructive embryo research, and human cloning.

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