U.S. Supreme Court to consider San Francisco abortion case

Photo courtesy U.S. Supreme Court

By Julia Cheever, Bay City News Service

November 7, 2006

A case that originated in federal court in San Francisco is one of two lawsuits concerning an abortion procedure that will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The high court will be considering the government's appeal of lower court rulings that struck down a 2003 federal law known as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

The law would make it a crime for a doctor to perform a type of abortion in which a fetus is partially delivered intact and then killed. An exception can be made to save a woman's life, but not to preserve her health.

Supporters of the law say the procedure is a gruesome late-term measure that is never medically necessary except to save a woman's life.

Critics contend the law would also ban the most commonly used method for second trimester abortions before a fetus is viable.

One of the lawsuits challenging the law was filed in San Francisco by Planned Parenthood Federation of America and later joined by the city of San Francisco. The other case originated in Nebraska. In both cases, federal district judges struck down the law and federal appeals court upheld those rulings.

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