President Bush Signs Law Putting Women's Health In Danger
By signing the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Ban, President Bush has become the first US President in history to criminalize safe medical procedures. By passing this law, President Bush and his anti-choice allies in Congress showed their utter disregard for existing U.S. Supreme Court law. He also exposed his clear intention to erode Roe v. Wade and his goal of denying all women the right to access any and all safe and legal abortions in this country.
The law does not ban only a single procedure and deliberately lacks any mention of a viability line, yet anti-choice legislators and activists almost exclusively focus on pregnancies close to term. This law is not a late-term abortion ban. It outlaws most abortions after 12 weeks. It is intentionally deceptive in many respects, one being that if its true intention was to focus on late-term abortions it would be unnecessary, since 41 states already have post-viability bans on the books (consistent with Roe) and 99% of all abortions occur before the 20th week.
This law unconstitutionally endangers the life and health of women. In Stenberg v.Carhart, the Supreme Court decision made in 2000, the Court reaffirmed that women's health must always be protected. Despite that holding, the President and the bill's sponsors refused to include an exception protecting women's health and blatantly disregarded this Supreme Court decision.
Missouri NARAL strongly believes that the decision about whether or when to have an abortion is a private medical decision that should be made by a woman and her family, not by politicians. This is a view held by most of the American public when they are educated on this matter.
The good news is that within one hour of the President signing this Act into law a Judge in Nebraska entered a temporary restraining order preventing it from going into effect. The basis of the Nebraska judge's ruling was the absence of the new law's exception protecting the health of women, as required by the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case. This issue will need to be decided in the courts and, until it is, the law will have not take effect.
Missouri NARAL will keep you informed!
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