Partial-birth abortion ban overruled

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

A federal judge today declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional, saying the measure infringes on a woman's right to choose.

The ruling applies to Planned Parenthood clinics and their doctors, who perform roughly half the nation's abortions.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton's ruling came in one of three lawsuits challenging the legislation President Bush signed last year.

"The act poses an undue burden on a woman's right to choose an abortion," she wrote.

Federal judges in New York and Nebraska also heard challenges to the law earlier this year but have yet to rule.

Bush signed the bill in November, saying "a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth while the law looked the other way."

Click here for the rest.

Of course, banning this rarely used procedure has much less to do with "rescuing" fetuses "inches from birth" and much more to do with incrementally eroding women's control of their own bodies. There's a good chance that this case will make it to the Supreme Court, which offers conservative justices the opportunity to further chip away at Roe v Wade: I'm glad that the law was overruled, but, on some levels this whole thing makes me nervous--pro-lifers think they've got a shot, and they might be right. If this law is eventually determined to be Constitutional, it will make it all the easier to harass abortion providers out of business. In that case, women may still technically have the right to choose, but with doctors afraid of being arrested or sued for what may or may not be defined as a "partial birth" abortion (the actual term for the procedure is "dilation and extraction"), it could be rather difficult for women to exercise that choice in reality.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$