No Compromise on Abortion Rights

The US Supreme court, in the Carhart decision, upheld the Federal Abortion Ban on April 18^th, 2007 ruling that the abortion restriction does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. (This is the decision on so-called Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act signed by President Bush).

This anti-woman ruling is an all out attack on women’s rights, designed, funded and promoted by anti-abortion strategists in an effort to make all abortion illegal. This sets the dangerous precedent that physicians will be open to scrutiny of their medical procedures through a politically motivated Act of Congress.

This is first wide reaching abortion restriction since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in all states. The vaguely written act does not specify what stage in pregnancy abortions could be restricted, but restricts the method of removing the fetus. Women’s Health Specialists of California advocates for women to have access to all health, pregnancy and abortion options. WHS of California advocates that the safest abortion procedures are available to all women, including those restricted by the Abortion Ban.

The Abortion Ban Act was doggedly promoted during the 90’s by the anti-abortion movement in a rush of hype and lies including the myth that women can get abortions up to the time of birth. This disinformation campaign leaves a wake of confusion even today, masking the reality that this decision upholds an Act of Congress which will limit certain abortions in the first and second trimester of pregnancy.

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Read more on the Supreme Court’s decision below…

 

Read “United We – and Roe v. Wade – Stand”, in the January 24, 2008, Chico News and Review Guest Commentary, by Eileen Schnitger, Development Director for Women’s Health Specialists

Contact us to with your ideas and to join in a community effort to preserve reproductive rights for all women. Email: mail@womenshealthspecialists.org

 

 

Read the US Supreme Court’s Carhart decision.

 

Excerpt of AP news story:

Supreme Court Upholds Ban

On Abortion Procedure

Associated Press
April 18, 2007 10:23 a.m.

 

The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a disputed 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.

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.

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.

Justice 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.