Abortion On Trial
Donna E. Shalala was secretary of health and human services for eight years in the Clinton administration and is now the president of the University of Miami.
Editor's Note: The trials challenging the federal ban on abortion are beginning their third week. For more information, visit the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Website .
Last November, the first federal ban on abortions performed as early as 12 to 15 weeks in pregnancy was passed by Congress and signed into law. The new law would ban abortions that are safe, medically appropriate and sometimes the best means to protect women's health. In both 1996 and 1997, President Clinton vetoed such a ban because our administration concluded that it endangered women's health and took medical decisions away from those with the right and the expertise to make them"doctors and their patients.
The latest bill was signed into law despite the fact that physicians and leading medical organizations have gone on the record opposing it. Indeed, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, representing more than 90 percent of all OB-GYN specialists in the United States, says, "The intervention of legislative bodies into medical decision-making is inappropriate, ill advised and dangerous."
The name of the law"the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003"has misled people into thinking this ban is about something it isn't. It is not about women giving birth, nor is it about third-trimester abortions. Forty states and the District of Columbia already ban third-trimester abortions; this act is so broad it would prohibit a wide range of abortions performed in the second trimester.
Moreover, the federal ban provides no exception to protect women's health. Instead, it restricts appropriate medical care by banning abortions in the second trimester that doctors say are safe and sometimes central to protecting their patients' health. That's why President Clinton twice vetoed similar bans, saying women "should not become pawns in a larger debate."
Legal challenges
The current law is still bad medicine. The 2003 Federal Abortion Ban represents a dangerous step backward for women's health. Leading medical organizations"including the American College of Nurse Practitioners, the American Public Health Association and the Association of Schools of Public Health"have recognized that this ban will endanger women's health and inappropriately interfere with medical decision making. They have joined other medical groups in calling for its reversal.
To that end, the law is being challenged in federal courts in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Neb. Trials began the first week in April and are expected to last several weeks. The lawsuits are being brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the National Abortion Federation and other doctors; the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of Dr. LeRoy Carhart and other doctors; and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America on behalf of its member affiliates. In each case, physicians are asking the courts to invalidate this law that puts the health of the women they serve at risk.
The judges hearing these cases moved swiftly to block enforcement of the federal ban in order to protect women's health while the cases proceed. In so doing, the courts recognized the precedent set in 2000 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Stenberg v. Carhart, which was argued by the Center for Reproductive Rights. In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a Nebraska law similar to the federal ban was unconstitutional because it placed an undue burden on a woman's right to choose abortion and did not include a health exception to protect women.
Decisions involving pregnancy and medical care are among the most intimate and serious a woman will make in her life. Women deserve the learned, unbiased medical advice of their physicians. The Federal Abortion Ban was bad policy in 1996 and 1997, and it remains bad policy today.
Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared in the Billings (Mont.) Gazette on April 5, 2004.
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Published: Apr 12 2004
