Judge Voids Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

NEW YORK —  Agreeing with a California court, a federal judge ruled today that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act was unconstitutional because it failed to contain an exemption for circumstances to preserve a woman’s health and life.

U.S. District Judge Richard C. Casey cited the Supreme Court’s decision that the procedure can only be outlawed if doctors conclude it has no benefit.

“While Congress and lower courts may disagree with the Supreme Court’s constitutional decisions, that does not free them from their constitutional duty to obey the Supreme Court’s rulings,” Casey said.

The Justice Department had appealed the finding of U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton in San Francisco in June that the ban was vague and imposed an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose. A federal judge in Lincoln, Neb. still has not ruled.

In a 92-page opinion issued two months after testimony ended in federal court in Manhattan, Casey said that even a physician who was a government witness acknowledged that debate existed in the medical community over whether the procedure is the safest for some women under certain circumstances.

At the same time, he cited testimony he heard and witnesses who told Congress that the abortion method was a “gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized medical procedure.”

President Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act last year — the first law to forbid an abortion method since the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade affirmed a woman’s right more than three decades ago to end her pregnancy.

The controversial procedure that most physicians label “intact dilation and extraction” partially removes a fetus from the uterus before its skull is punctured or crushed.

“President Bush has said this law ‘will end an abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life in America,’ ” said Monica Goodling, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which has appealed the ruling from California.

Government attorneys defending the ban in the three trials argued that the procedure causes fetal pain, blurs the line between abortion and infanticide, and is not medically necessary.

Abortion advocates and major medical associations dispute those charges and said the ban on the procedure was so vague as to limit most medically necessary second-trimester abortions.

Ninety percent of the 1.3 million abortions performed in America each year take place in the first trimester, which the federal law does not affect. Second-trimester abortions are performed for a variety of reasons, including concerns about the woman’s health if the pregnancy continues, and fetal anomalies. Supporters and opponents of the law differ widely on how many second-trimester abortions it would ban.

Supporters of the law say it would affect only 2,200 to 5,000 abortions, but opponents say virtually any second-trimester abortion could be affected.

Times staff writers Lee Romney and Mary MacVean contributed to this report.