Bush's court delivers US abortion ban

George Bush's new, conservative Supreme Court delivered a victory to anti-abortion activists yesterday when it upheld the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Act, which outlaws a specific, relatively rare procedure usually carried out on pregnant women reaching the end of the second trimester.

The issue has been mired in controversy for years, with anti-abortion activists arguing that the operation, which involves crushing the foetus's head, is unspeakably barbaric while their opponents say it can, in certain circumstances, be the least traumatic way of ending a pregnancy and causing least damage to the health of the mother.

Six courts have ruled that the 2003 federal law banning the procedure was unconstitutional because it did not provide an exception to protect the life and health of the mother. It seems likely that the Supreme Court would have made a similar ruling until last year, when Sandra Day O'Connor retired and was replaced by Samuel Alito, a hardline conservative. That change shifted the balance on the Court to a 5-4 majority generally hostile towards abortion laws. Before Justice Alito's appointment, John Roberts, a conservative, replaced the late William Rehnquist as Chief Justice.

The ruling yesterday was widely expected, but that made it no less likely to restoke the fires of the abortion debate and heighten speculation that this Supreme Court might one day strike down Roe vs Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that gave women the constitutional right to seek an abortion in the first place.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the procedure was "laden with the power to devalue human life" and was likely to traumatise women who underwent it.

Justice Kennedy also pointed out that other late-pregnancy abortion procedures were available, so banning "intact dilation and extraction" - known only to its opponents as partial-birth abortion - did not necessarily close medical doors in dire circumstances.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court's sole woman justice, called the decision "alarming". "It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists," she wrote in a dissenting judgment.

"And, for the first time since Roe, the court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman's health." She also took issue with the idea that women were best protected by denying them the opportunity to choose between different abortion procedures. "This way of protecting women recalls ancient notions about women's place in society and under the constitution - ideas that have long since been discredited," she added.

The debate on so-called partial-birth abortion has its origin in a Nebraska state law, which attempted to outlaw the procedure in the late Nineties. When the Nebraska courts struck the law down, the then Republican majority in Congress in Washington passed the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Act, which was then signed by President Bush.

Abortion no longer occupies the contentious space it once did - activists have grown jaded about the prospects of their political champions taking the action necessary to make abortion illegal. That could change, thanks to the conservatives President Bush has nominated to the court.

"I am pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld a law that prohibits the abhorrent procedure of partial-birth abortion," he said. "Today's decision affirms that the constitution does not stand in the way of the people's representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of America."

Partial-birth abortion

The "intact dilation and extraction" (IDX) abortion procedure, more commonly referred to as a partial-birth abortion, is a medical procedure used to terminate a pregnancy in its later stages, usually between 18 and 26 weeks after conception.

Although used only in rare circumstances (pro-abortion campaigners say that only 0.17 per cent of abortions in the United States are carried out using IDX), it remains one of the most controversial abortion procedures.

Anti-abortionists are hostile to the technique because doctors remove the legs and body of a fetus from the womb, initially with forceps, before using a catheter to extract the brain tissue which then allows the head to pass out naturally through the vagina.

The ban on partial abortions which the US Supreme Court has upheld makes it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion when the "entire fetal head" or "any part of the fetal trunk past the navel" is outside the uterus, which will make IDX illegal in most cases.

In the UK, abortion is allowed up to 24 weeks as long as the patient obtains the consent of two doctors. Abortion is only allowed after 24 weeks if there is a risk to the life of the woman, evidence of severe fetal abnormality or a risk of grave physical and mental injury to the woman. IDX is used by doctors to carry out an abortion but, as in the United States, it is a rare procedure.