Virginia attorney general to challenge court's OK of partial-birth abortion

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell on Friday said he will request a full hearing of a federal court ruling that struck down the state's ban on partial-birth abortion.

McDonnell, a Republican running for governor in 2009, announced he will ask the full Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the May 20 ruling from its smaller three-judge panel, which declared the state's legislation on late-term abortion unconstitutional despite a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.

"It is my belief that Virginia's partial-birth abortion ban, passed overwhelmingly by the people's elected representatives in the General Assembly, is constitutional," the attorney general said.

In Richmond Medical Center v. Herring, a 2-1 majority of the federal appeals panel held that the law "imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to obtain an abortion." The judges drew a distinction between a federal partial-birth abortion ban, which protects doctors who perform one accidentally while attempting a legal abortion, and the state ban, which doesn't.

The state law was first challenged in a Richmond district court by Dr. William G. Fitzhugh shortly before the ban went into effect in 2003. That court ruled in Fitzhugh's favor.

McDonnell said he had two options following the decision by the federal panel: seek a rehearing at the full court or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Gonzales v. Carhart, the high court in April 2007 upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which McDonnell argues is a "very similar ban" to Virginia's. He cited the ruling as one of the reasons to appeal to the full Fourth Circuit panel.

wflook@dcexaminer.com