Ruling May Energize Abortion Foes

While Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision striking down Nebraska’s ban on “partial-birth” abortion appears to be a victory for abortion-rights supporters, in the end it may be a bigger boon for anti-abortion advocates.

The decision is certain to give energy to activists on both sides of the abortion debate, with supporters and opponents alike setting their sights on this fall’s presidential election.

But the ruling, while disappointing for anti-abortion activists, who have worked since the early 1990s to ban partial-birth abortions, seems likely to give their side more momentum.

“This decision will activate the pro-life side of this debate, just because the court’s vote was so close,” said Darrell West, a professor of political science at Brown University. The vote was 5 to 4.

Indeed, within hours anti-abortion activists were saying that their loss in the high court could translate into a gain at the polls. Anti-abortion activists believe that the court’s action will help them sway centrist voters who, although they may support abortion rights generally, say that they are comfortable with banning this type of abortion.

A vote for Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is more likely to produce a Supreme Court that would ban abortion procedures, they will tell voters.

“The take-home message in most people’s head is that this procedure is gross, it’s awful and why can’t we get rid of it,” said Helen Alvare of the Pro-Life Committee of the National Conference for Catholic Bishops. “And abortion advocates are saying it’s not fair to women to ban it . . . [and that] makes them look extreme. This is going to prove to be an Achilles’ heel for abortion advocates,” she predicted.

Abortion-rights supporters, meanwhile, found no margin of comfort in the narrow court decision. They will continue to focus on encouraging voters to send Vice President Al Gore to the White House because they believe he would appoint justices who would safeguard abortion rights. Rather than focusing on the specifics of “partial-birth” abortions, the abortion-rights advocates say that they will try to get voters to think in terms of preserving the overall right to abortion.

“Right now we have to turn our attention to the November election,” said Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

“The court’s decision was a precarious one. It just takes one justice to completely reverse today’s result, so the stakes could not be higher. We know that George Bush would appoint justices along the lines of Justice [Antonin] Scalia, who dissented from today’s decision.”

And a court with more conservative justices, said Cavendish, likely would turn “the abortion decision back to the states, which would eliminate the right to choose entirely in state after state.”

Hampering the efforts of abortion-rights advocates, however, is that the real-world impact of a ban on “partial-birth” abortions is poorly understood. Most people believe that such a ban affects only one rarely performed procedure that sounds disturbing at best and is performed when the fetus is close to viability. According to a recent Times poll, 65% of Americans do not approve of second-trimester abortions.

The majority of justices ruled that the wording of Nebraska’s law likely banned two types of second-trimester abortions: the one most commonly referred to as “partial birth,” which involves pulling most of the fetus through the vagina and then puncturing the skull to drain the contents so that it can be collapsed and removed without injuring the woman, and the more common method, which involves dismembering the fetus inside the womb before removing it.

If all or most second-trimester abortions were banned, about 130,000 pregnancy terminations a year would be affected. While that is barely 10% of all abortions performed annually in the United States, it is still a far larger number than is commonly understood.

Already, the states and Congress are considering to what extent the bans on “partial-birth” abortion can be rewritten in response to the justices’ criticism. In addition, they probably would attempt to test another aspect of abortion jurisprudence as well.

Federal legislation to ban “partial-birth” abortions is being revised in a House-Senate conference committee. Douglas Johnson, federal legislation director for National Right to Life, said that lawmakers might alter the language somewhat to specify that the ban applies to a single, relatively rare abortion procedure.

In Nebraska, anti-abortion advocates are unsure what tack they will take legislatively. As for the presidential election, they are forging ahead.

“Clearly, George Bush is pro-life and supportive of this ban. Al Gore is not and is willing to allow this horrific procedure to continue,” said Sandy Danek, a spokeswoman for Nebraska Right to Life. “So we will work to bring George Bush to the White House in November.”

In the past, both anti-abortion and abortion-rights advocates have mobilized after suffering defeat in the courts. But it is the anti-abortion side that seems to gain the most traction.

Because of the near-certainty that the issue will remain in the public eye as states try to pass the bans again, abortion-rights advocates say they have a tough road ahead.

“What this means is that this fight does not go away,” said Kathryn Kolbert, a senior researcher at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, who is an abortion-rights lawyer. And “the longer you have to dwell on the details of this,” she added, “it can’t help the pro-choice side.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Key Abortion Rulings

The Supreme Court on Wednesday added to its long line of abortion rulings since its landmark Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973 that women have a constitutional right to abortion. Highlights of the key rulings:

*

* Roe vs. Wade in 1973: The court by a 7-2 vote said the constitutional right to privacy gives women the right to choose an abortion.

*

* Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri vs. Danforth in 1976: The court struck down a Missouri abortion law requiring the consent of a woman’s husband and parents.

*

* Bellotti vs. Baird in 1979: The court ruled that states cannot require girls under 18 to obtain parental consent for an abortion. Mature minors may get permission from a judge instead of going to their parents.

*

* Harris vs. McRae in 1980: The court upheld a U.S. law that banned the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion except when necessary to save the woman’s life.

*

* City of Akron vs. Akron Center for Reproductive Health in 1983: The court struck down a city law that required women to wait 24 hours before having an abortion and said all abortions after the first trimester must be performed in a hospital.

*

* Planned Parenthood of Kansas City vs. Ashcroft in 1983: The court upheld a Missouri law that required the presence of two doctors at abortions done late in pregnancies and said a pathology report must be obtained for every abortion.

*

* Thornburgh vs. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1986: By a 5-4 vote, the court rejected a Reagan administration request to overturn Roe vs. Wade, striking down a Pennsylvania law designed to dissuade women from having abortions.

*

* Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services in 1989: The court by a 5-4 vote approved significant new restrictions in abortion law, including allowing the states to ban public funds for abortion and prohibit abortions at public facilities or by public workers.

*

* Hodgson vs. Minnesota and Ohio vs. Akron Center for Reproductive Health in 1990: The court upheld state laws that require teenage girls to notify at least one parent before an abortion. It also allowed an alternative procedure under which pregnant girls may get approval from a judge instead of telling a parent.

*

* Rust vs. Sullivan in 1991: The court by a 5-4 vote upheld the federal government’s so-called gag rule barring federally funded clinics from giving patients abortion advice. President Clinton rescinded the rule in 1993.

*

* Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania vs. Casey in 1992: The court by a 5-4 vote reaffirmed the central holding from Roe that women have a basic constitutional right to an abortion, but it allowed some new restrictions as long as they do not pose an “undue burden” on pregnant women.

*

* Stenberg vs. Carhart in 2000: The court by a 5-4 vote struck down a state law that banned a surgical abortion procedure known as “partial-birth abortion.”

*

Source: Reuters