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Appeals court to weigh ban on partial-birth abortion
WASHINGTON -
The full Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will review a May ruling by a smaller panel of its judges that struck down Virginia’s partial-birth abortion ban, the court said Monday. The federal appeals court granted the rehearing of Richmond Medical Center vs. Herring at the request of Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell, who is fighting the 2-1 panel decision that found the state statute barring the form of late-term abortion unconstitutional. Oral arguments are tentatively set for Oct. 28 through Oct. 31. In defending the law’s constitutionality, McDonnell points to what he argues is a “substantively similar” ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court last year that upheld a federal partial-birth abortion ban. He said he is hopeful the full court will overturn the panel ruling and that he was “pleased by today’s decision.” The three-judge panel’s decision hinged on a key distinction between the federal ban and Virginia’s, however, in that the state law didn’t provide the same protections for doctors who accidentally perform a partial-birth abortion while attempting a legal one. The 2003 Virginia law was challenged in Richmond District Court by Dr. William G. Fitzhugh of Richmond Medical Center for Women. Stephanie Toti, a staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights who represents the medical center, called the state’s version of the ban “much broader” than the federal one. “The law at issue is really an extreme law that bans the most common method of second trimester abortion,” she said. “There is really nothing exceptional about the panel’s decision that it was unconstitutional.” In Gonzales vs. Carhart, a narrow U.S. Supreme Court majority ruled in April 2007 that the federal ban did not impose an undue burden on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, which has been a key constitutional threshold for abortion regulations across the country. McDonnell, a Republican, is running for governor in 2009. wflook@dcexaminer.com |
