New York judge calls Partial Birth Abortion Act unconstitutional
LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer
In a highly anticipated ruling, a federal judge found the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Thursday because it does not include a health exception.
U.S. District Judge Richard C. Casey in Manhattan said the Supreme Court has made it clear that a law that prohibits the performance of a particular abortion procedure must include an exception to preserve a woman's life and health.
Casey issued the ruling two months after hearing closing arguments in the case.
A San Francisco judge has already declared the 2003 law unconstitutional, and a judge in Lincoln, Neb., is still considering the question. The three judges suspended the ban while they held the trials.
The law, signed in November, represented the first substantial federal legislation limiting a woman's right to choose an abortion. Abortion rights activists said it conflicted with three decades of Supreme Court precedent.
It banned a procedure that is known to doctors as intact dilation and extraction, but is called "partial-birth abortion" by abortion foes. During the procedure, the fetus is partially removed from the womb, and its skull is punctured or crushed.
The judge challenged the conclusion by Congress that there is no significant body of medical opinion that the procedure has safety advantages for women.
Casey said the congressional record itself undermined the finding because it included contradictory views, including nine medical associations which opposed the act because they believed the abortion procedure provides safety advantages for some women.
In the San Francisco ruling, issued June 1, U.S. District Judge said the act places an undue burden on a woman's right to choose