RICHMOND, February 4, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the ongoing struggle between state legislatures and the activist judiciary, U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams has struck down Virginia’s partial birth abortion ban. Williams said that the law violated privacy rights and failed to make an exception for the health of the woman. In the history of abortion, the term “health” of the mother has been interpreted so broadly as to make any form of abortion legal for any reason or no reason.
The aggressively pro-abortion, Center for Reproductive Rights filed suit to strike down the ban and called the lawsuit a precursor to a challenge to the recently passed federal ban.
In a media release, Nancy Northup, president of the Center said, “Today’s decision should foreshadow the outcome of our challenge to the federal abortion ban. Courts across the country - including the U.S. Supreme Court - have been clear that such bans are an unconstitutional threat to women’s health and lives.”
No medical evidence, however, has ever been found that a partial birth abortion has any beneficial effect on a woman’s health. The procedure, which involves the almost complete delivery and gruesome killing of a late-term child, has been shown to have disastrous long range psychological and physical health effects for the mother. Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore has promised to appeal the decision, “Virginia absolutely has the right to define when a live birth has occurred, and our society should not allow the murder of babies just as they are inches away from drawing their first breaths,” Kilgore said in the statement. “The people of Virginia were right to tell their elected representatives to ban this barbaric procedure.” Williams also chastised the legislation’s authors for using the term “partial birth infanticide” saying that they were trying to alarm the public.
The author of the legislation was angered by the decision, “If (Williams) can’t distinguish between a child and an abortion, he has no business being on the federal bench,” Marshall said. “He doesn’t have the mental faculties to act on the federal bench, and I would impeach him.” See local coverage: http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=65626&ran=64431
Read the media release from the Center for Reproductive Rights http://www.crlp.org/pr_04_0202vapbi.html