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Supreme Court to rule on late-term abortions
Posted
1-24-2000 Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court said recently it would hear arguments and rule on state laws that ban a type of late-term abortion, setting the stage for its first abortion rights ruling in eight years. The high court agreed to hear an appeal by Nebraska involving its law that bans intact dilation and extraction, which critics call "partial birth" abortion. Nebraska's attorney general said the state was one of 30 that have adopted such laws since 1995. The Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of the procedure, which has been used mainly in late-term pregnancies when the woman faces a medical crisis. Nebraska appealed to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court in September struck down as unconstitutional laws in Nebraska, Arkansas, and Iowa that banned the procedure. A month later, a federal appeals court in Chicago upheld by a 5-4 vote Illinois and Wisconsin laws banning the procedure and ruled they could be enforced in a constitutional manner. The conflicting rulings increased the chance the Supreme Court would decide the issue once and for all. The justices will hear arguments in the case in April, with a decision due by the end of June. In appealing to the Supreme Court, Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg said that the appeals court was wrong to conclude that the ban amounted to an undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion. Stenberg also said that the court could use the case as a vehicle for overturning its historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortions legal as the law of the land. The Supreme Court rejected that request, limiting its review just to the question of "partial birth" abortion. Stenberg said that this "particularly hideous procedure" should be outlawed. Ten other states supported the appeal. Attorneys for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, representing a Nebraska physician who challenged the law, said that the state's arguments for reviewing the law were "meritless" and should be rejected.
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