Supreme Court Backs Ban on Abortion Procedure

Court Backs Ban on Abortion Procedure

By MARK SHERMAN

Apr 18, 10:13 AM EDT

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how - not whether - to perform an abortion.

In Mexico, a Furious Debate Over Abortion

Catholic Church Fights Legislation

By Manuel Roig-Franzia

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 15, 2007; Page A01

MEXICO CITY -- The young woman with the cascading curls walked into a dumpy house with no sign out front on the day she decided to get an abortion.

Inside, she says, she paid $200 for eight syringes filled with a milky liquid and a set of instructions. She spent the night in a Mexico City hotel room, self-administering injections that made her bleed and cry out in agony.

The next day, weak and depressed, the woman was persuaded by her sister to see a doctor, who determined that she had undergone an incomplete abortion, the woman said during an interview on condition of anonymity. He conducted an emergency procedure to complete the abortion and stave off infection.

"What have I done?" she recalled thinking. "I risked my life."

The woman and tens of thousands like her who undergo illegal abortions in Mexico each year are at the nexus of a furious cultural debate gripping this nation, which allows abortion only in limited cases, including rape and when the mother's life is in danger. Abortion opponents cite cases such as hers as evidence that abortion should be further curtailed; abortion rights advocates argue that the procedure should be decriminalized so that women have access to safe abortions

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