US Supreme Court upholds late-term abortion
April 19th, 2007 by ashish
In a ruling that would have shocked a large section of the population, especially the pro-choice section, the US Supreme Court upheld a federal law on banning a type of late-term adoption. This was unexpected since the law had no clause dealing with health exceptions for the mother, a fact that had caused federal courts to block the law, and prevented the law from being active.
This law deals with a type of abortion carried out in the middle-to-late second trimester. In the past, such laws have been dis-allowed if they don’t have an exception for health reasons, and this law certainly did not. Doctors call this type of late-term abortion an “intact dilation and evacuation.” Abortion foes term it a “partial-birth abortion.” What makes it more distressing for abortion-rights supporters is the fact that, given the changed nature of the Supreme Court, more restrictions on abortion rights are feared as states move to challenge the right to abortion.
The US Supreme Court has moved to the more conservative side as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor resigned from the court and was replaced by the far more conservative Justice Samuel Alito. This caused the liberal majority to be over-turned by a conservative majority, with Justice Anthony Kennedy being the swing voter. This is actually a distortion of the concept of the Supreme Court, where the justices were meant to be reasoned people who will evaluate every case on its merit, and certainly not be selected based on how they appeal to the President and the Senate majority as of that point of time. Typically, Justices sent to the Supreme Court outlast the appointing Presidents and the Senate by a long stretch, and in many ways, decide the course of the nation. Their selection process needs to be less political. One can be sure that it now happen both ways, suppose a vacancy on the court comes, there is no way that a similar conservative can be selected, since the Senate is now thinly controlled by the Democratic Party. Refer this CNN article:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a law that banned a type of late-term abortion, a ruling that could portend enormous social, legal and political implications for the divisive issue.
The sharply divided 5-4 ruling could prove historic. It sends a possible signal of the court’s willingness, under Chief Justice John Roberts, to someday revisit the basic right to abortion guaranteed in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.
In a bitter dissent read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on the high court, said the majority’s opinion “cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away a right declared again and again by this court, and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives.”
This was the first time the high court had heard a major abortion case in six years, and since then, its makeup has changed, with Roberts and Alito now on board.
Their presence on the bench provided the solid conservative majority needed to allow the federal ban to go into effect, with Kennedy providing the key fifth vote for a majority.
