Attorney: SCOTUS Partial-Birth Abortion Vote Will Hinge on Kennedy
by Jim Brown
November 3, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A Christian attorney predicts the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold Congress's ban on partial-birth abortion. Next Wednesday, the high court will hear oral arguments in two cases -- Gonzalez v. Carhart and Gonzalez v. Planned Parenthood -- that challenge the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.In its 2000 ruling on Stenberg v. Carhart, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar abortion ban in a 5-4 decision. In explaining its reasoning, the court cited the Nebraska statute's lack of a health exception -- i.e., it did not allow an exception to the abortion ban in cases where an abortion is deemed necessary to protect a woman's health.
Many legal observers believe Justice Anthony Kennedy will be the key swing vote this time as the high court takes up the partial-birth abortion ban. Ben Bull, chief counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), believes Kennedy will remain truthful to his dissent in Stenberg and follow the positions he staked out there.
Recently, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Bull took part in a debate on partial-birth abortion hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. He commented, "I submit to you that, as we say out west, the 'smart money in Las Vegas' would say that Kennedy forms a new majority with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito affirming the federal statue banning partial-birth abortion."
Kennedy was passionate in his dissent against Stenberg and stressed the fact that "there are no studies -- no studies -- that support the contention that the partial-birth abortion procedure is any safer than any other kind of abortion procedure," Bull notes. "Remember," he points out, "this case next Wednesday is ... going to turn largely on whose studies are accepted by the court."
Justice Kennedy has said that, having looked at the studies on partial-birth abortion thoroughly, he has found that "there are no studies that show this is a superior procedure for purposes of health," the ADF attorney observes. He believes Kennedy's vote will be the crucial one as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act goes before the high court bench on Wednesday.
Bull says even the Supreme Court that handed down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in the U.S., viewed partial-birth abortion as homicide. He believes even that court would never have awarded constitutional protection to that gruesome and inhumane abortion procedure.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
