On The Front Lines
Rutherford Institute Attorneys Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Oppose Gruesome Abortion Procedure by Upholding Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a "friend of the court" brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart. The brief calls on the Supreme Court to affirm Congress' prudent and humane decision to spare America's unborn children from a cruel and barbaric abortion procedure known as partial-birth abortion by declaring constitutional the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. A copy of the brief is available here.
"Partial-birth abortion is a brutal, gruesome and inhumane procedure that should be condemned by all civilized societies," stated John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "As the Supreme Court has ruled before, no right is without exceptions. Congress rightly recognized this when it passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban as legislation that is necessary to protect our society from barbarism."
Having determined after extensive hearings and expert testimony that the rare and particularly gruesome method of abortion referred to as partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary to preserve the health of the mother, Congress consequently passed legislation to ban the procedure except when it is performed to save the mother's life. The bill defines a partial-birth abortion as an abortion in which the person performing the abortion partially vaginally delivers a living fetus before killing the fetus and completing the delivery. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was passed with bipartisan support by both chambers of Congress in 2003 and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 5, 2003. However, before it could be implemented, the bill was declared unconstitutional by federal judges in California, New York and Nebraska. At issue before the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart is the question of whether the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act's lack of an exception to preserve the health of the mother (it does contain an exemption to save her life) renders it unconstitutional and in conflict with prior Supreme Court rulings. In their brief, Rutherford Institute attorneys make the case that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is not a frontal attack on the Court's settled abortion precedents in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Instead, the brief points out, "this Act illustrates a wise, prudent and constitutional decision by Congress to protect a small number of innocent unborn children from a horrific and barbaric procedure." While the brief acknowledges that physicians should have the right to make medical judgments to save the mother's life or protect her from life-threatening physical harm, Institute attorneys insist that such a right "must not extend to the practice of brutally killing unborn children for the sake of protecting the mother's non-physical medical problems and to enhance a medical industry dedicated to organ harvesting." The brief also points out that requiring Congress to include a health exception to the partial-birth abortion procedure propels abortion to an unprecedented absolute right. Yet, as Institute attorneys argue, individual rights must sometimes yield to a compelling societal interest. Thus, "to favor a mother's non-medical emergency over a prohibition against this type of killing of a mostly born human being is senseless and antithetical to any civilized society."
