From our perspective
Barry Raff
Unconstitutional medical
ban endangers womenPresident Bush just signed into law the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003 that will endanger the lives of women all across America.
This reckless ban prevents a woman, in consultation with her doctor, from making decisions on the best way to protect her health and life. Governments and politicians should not practice medicine.
The most respected medical associations in the country oppose this law. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) stated its position clearly:
>> "Intervention of legislative bodies into medical decision-making is inappropriate, ill-advised and dangerous."Although promoted as narrowly focused on a single late-term abortion procedure, the act does not indicate a specific gestation age nor does it explicitly define a prohibited medical procedure. This act would not only ban the abortion procedure known as intact dilation and extraction (D&X) but it defines "partial birth abortion" in a way that will also ban many abortions performed by the most common method -- dilation and evacuation (D&E).>> "The act is vague and broad, with the potential to restrict other techniques in OB/GYN."
>> "It fails to use recognized medical terminology and fails to define explicitly the prohibited medical procedure it criminalizes."
Under the act, many doctors will be chilled from performing these D&E abortions. A physician could be jailed for performing a D&X procedure, although this may be the most appropriate in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a women.
The Supreme Count ruled a similar Nebraska law unconstitutional three years ago because it did not contain a health exception and because the banned procedure reached down to the common D&E procedure and the "result is an undue burden upon the woman's rights to make an abortion decision." This act is unconstitutional for the same two reasons (1) it lacks a health exception for the health of the mother and (2) its broad language imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to choose abortion.
It is already legal for states to prohibit abortions once a fetus is viable, at about 24 weeks, and many states have such bans. Any pregnancy can go terribly wrong, and this ban outlaws medically necessary abortions that women may need for serious medical conditions. The increasing availability of sophisticated medical technology that may detect serious fetal anomalies in the second trimester or conditions which threaten maternal welfare have the real world effect of placing women in a situation where they may discover the effect of this law. It will put doctors in jail for providing the best and safest health care to women.
No member of Congress would want his or her daughter or sister to have her health or life endangered because this law prohibits her from receiving the best medical care. Indeed, no woman in America should be at the mercy of politically motivated anti-choice, anti-woman lawmakers who are endangering the lives of women for their own political gain.
Because our mandate is to provide the highest quality reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood has sought an injunction and requested a restraining order to prevent this legislation from taking affect.
We will win in court again. The issue is why we continually are fighting for what should already be the freedom -- the human right -- for women to make their own childbearing choices.
Barry Raff is chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Hawaii, a nonprofit organization providing reproductive health care and education services in Hawaii since 1966.
