Appeal likely after judge rules against Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, September 9, 2004
A federal ban against partial-birth abortions, a practice supported by the Presbyterian Church (USA), has been ruled unconstitutional by a third federal judge – setting the stage for appeals that might reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf of Lincoln, Neb., – echoing decisions by federal judges in New York and San Francisco – ruled against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act Wednesday, saying that Congress ignored the most experienced doctors when it determined that the banned procedure would never be needed to protect the mother’s health. Kopf called that finding “unreasonable,” the Associated Press reported.
The abortion ban, approved by both the U.S. House and Senate and signed last year by President George W. Bush, was not enforced because the three judges agreed to hear constitutional challenges in simultaneous non-jury trials, the Associated Press reported. The ban, which President Bill Clinton twice vetoed, was seen by abortion-rights activists as a fundamental departure from the Supreme Court’s 1973 precedent in Roe v. Wade. But the Bush administration argues that the late-term procedure is cruel and unnecessary.
In the late-term procedure, generally done in the second trimester, a fetus is partially removed from the womb and its skull is punctured or crushed.
The 216th General Assembly, meeting in Richmond, rejected attempts to change the denomination’s voice to protect viable babies from late-term abortion. Instead, for the third straight year, the national governing body continued to sanction a pro-abortion policy that permits unrestricted abortions, including those of viable babies – a policy that has been condemned by the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
In continuing that policy, the 216th General Assembly voted 286-185 to override a committee’s recommendation that called for more consideration of protecting the lives of babies.
The committee would have modified the denomination’s statement by affirming the “protection of viable babies in the womb. In cases where problems develop late in the pregnancy, we urge our members to support the live delivery of the baby. In the interest of protecting the life and health of both the mother and the baby, late-term abortion should be considered only if the physical life or mental health of the mother is at serious risk and no alternative means of delivering the baby alive is available. Furthermore, we urge our members to provide pastoral and tangible support to women in problem pregnancies, seeking ways that the church can intervene to mitigate the problems in a pregnancy or late-term abortion. We affirm adoption as a provision for women who deliver children they are not able to care for and ask our members to assist in seeking loving, adoptive families.”
But the commissioners voted not to place any limits on the denomination’s support for aborting viable babies, a practice that is banned by the federal law that is working its way through the court system.
That action was in response to three overtures that sought to overturn the PCUSA’s policy on abortion, overtures that were opposed by three denominational agencies – the Advisory Committee on the Constitution, the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy and the Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns – as “unnecessary” and that they “obscure current policy.”
Those overtures, had they been approved, radically would have altered what the denomination has to say about abortion. Previous General Assemblies have both sanctioned abortion – including so-called partial-birth or late-term abortion – while, at the same time, instructing Presbyterians to heed the moral opposition of those who oppose abortion.
But that moral opposition rarely has been heeded by denominational leaders. Instead, as is the case with the agencies that opposed these overtures, they almost always align with pro-abortion groups. In March, for example, the Washington Office helped sponsor a political march in Washington, D.C., to oppose any restrictions on abortion. The Washington Office does not promote any alternatives to abortion, such as adoption. Instead, it spends its resources and time advocating abortion with no moral restraints on when a woman may have such a procedure.