A chorus of pro-family groups, many of them evangelical, denounced the ruling of a federal judge who declared the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unenforceable to the 900 Planned Parenthood clinics around the country, which perform half of the nation’s abortions.
"The court was provided with ample evidence proving the law is Constitutional but this one judge, a Clinton appointee, has decided to ignore that evidence. Her decision is not simply a threat to unborn children, but to the democratic process,” said Perkins in a statement on Tuesday.
President Bush signed the law November 2003, saying "a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth while the law looked the other way."
Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the United States District Court for Northern California, said the ban on partial-birth abortion was unconstitutional and infringes a woman’s right to abort an unborn baby.
Abortion proponents claimed that abortion was needed for the woman’s health and the partial-birth abortion was a better abortion methods than other alternatives which included dismembering the fetus’ body inside the womb and then removing the pieces.
Justice Department attorneys’ said that abortions are never medically necessary and were inhumane because there has been evidence that unborn babies feel pain during the abortion process.
Senior Policy Director Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, the nation's largest public policy women's organization, agreed.
“Partial-birth abortion is a barbaric procedure which literally kills a baby that is completely delivered except for the head. Even the American Medical Association has said that Partial-Birth Abortion is never medically necessary,” said Wright.
Family Senior Policy Analyst for Bioethics Carrie Gordon Earll referred to the abortionist efforts as a “violent and brutal assault on innocent human life.”
Wright believed that Judge Phyllis Hamilton was pre-disposed to ruling in favor of abortion proponents.
“Judge Hamilton did not allow key, relevant testimony such as the pain felt by unborn babies and records that would prove that partial-birth abortions are never medically necessary,” she said.
Congress had banned partial-birth abortion after numerous doctors testifying that better alternatives to the method, which involves partially removing the live fetus from the womb and killing it by either puncturing its skull with a sharp instrument or crushing it. Doctors said the method may even be harmful to women.
Perkins lamented the ruling, calling it “not completely unexpected” and “a sign that courts are not afraid to ignore democratically enacted laws in favor of the abortion-on-demand agenda.”
The San Francisco case is one of three lawsuits challenging the partial-abortion ban. A ruling for the other two cases in New York and Nebraska is expected within weeks.
Perkins concluded, “While similar cases are currently pending in New York and Nebraska, the fate of the PBA ban will likely be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the meantime, this is the latest example on a growing list of cases exemplifying judicial activism in America.”
"We expect the law to pass constitutional muster and those babies will be protected, just as Congress overwhelmingly agreed with a large majority of the American people that Partial-birth Abortion was tantamount to infanticide,” said Wright.
The ruling is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and then proceed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
