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House Votes to Restrict Abortions: Bill Would Ban Method Foes Call 'Partial Birth' (Juliet Eilperin, June 5, 2003, Washington Post)

The House voted last night to ban a series of procedures that critics call "partial birth" abortion, handing abortion opponents their biggest legislative win in more than a decade.

President Bush -- unlike his predecessor -- has promised to sign the bill, which passed the Senate earlier this year in a slightly different form. Senate and House members plan to resolve those differences, and the measure could become law within weeks.

That will not end the fight, however. Abortion rights activists have vowed to challenge the measure in court, noting that three years ago the Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Nebraska. [...]

Congress has approved the ban twice before, but President Bill Clinton vetoed it each time. Supporters set the bill aside three years ago when the Supreme Court, voting 5 to 4, ruled that Nebraska's law on partial birth abortions was unconstitutional because it did not define the procedure clearly enough and failed to provide an exception for the mother's health.

Authors of the House bill said they addressed the court's concerns by including a more specific description of partial-birth abortion as well as language saying the procedure is never medically essential, making a health exception unnecessary.

It is true, as some are saying, that Congress really has no authority to regulate such things in a truly constitutional system. But neither did the Supreme Court have the authority to invent a "right of privacy", the sole basis for Roe v. Wade. The notion that the more democratic branches of government should defer to the usurpations of the least is not strict constitutionalism but lunacy. If the Court insists on intervening again the states, Congress and the Justice Department should simply ignore its ruling. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 5, 2003 12:34 PM