More Abortion Battles to Come
The fight over abortion moves to the states following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week upholding a ban on so-called partial birth abortion.
The fight over abortion moves to the states following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week upholding a ban on so-called partial birth abortion.
“It is a major shift, and we will be seeing the consequences for years to come,” Nancy Northrup, president of the New York City-based Center for Reproductive Rights, told the ABA Journal eReport. The center represented Nebraska abortion provider Leroy Carhart in Gonzales v. Carhart, No. 05-380 (PDF).
Some pending laws would require women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound of the fetus or require physicians to offer the option, according to the New York Times. But bill filing deadlines have already expired for the year in most state legislatures, the eReport says.
Abortion opponents are following an incremental strategy that seeks to chip away at abortion rights, professor Anne Hendershott of the University of San Diego told the Times.
However, there is a faction in the anti-abortion movement that opposes the “incrementalist” approach and believes striving for anything other than a complete abortion ban amounts to an unacceptable compromise. “If abortion is wrong, it’s wrong in all cases,” David Bereit, executive director of the American Life League, an anti-abortion group based in Stafford, Va., told the ABA Journal for a February story.
A comprehensive list of links to newspaper coverage and opinion pieces about the ruling is provided by a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation newsletter.
