U.S./Virigina : Judge overturns late term abortion law

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled Virginia's ban on a type of late-term abortion is unconstitutional, striking down a law that uses language mirroring the federal ban signed into law last year.

U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams blocked the state law in July and on Monday declared it void. Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said he plans to appeal.

Virginia's law made illegal what opponents call partial-birth abortion, a procedure generally performed in the second or third trimester in which a fetus is partially delivered before being killed.
Williams said the law violated privacy rights and failed to make an exception for the health of the woman. He also challenged the use of the term "partial birth infanticide" by the law's backers, saying it was an attempt to alarm the public...

If the abortion procedure ban is found to be constitutional, not only would it prohibit a specific late-term procedure—intact dilation and extraction (D & X)—but could possibly outlaw every abortion procedure performed after 12 weeks of pregnancy (the first trimester), including the more common dilation and evacuation (D & E) method. This could have dramatic consequences, since 143,000 American women annually have abortions during their second or third trimester. It would be particularly hard on women awaiting the results of amniocentesis, the common diagnostic tool for severe birth defects, which is usually administered during the 15th to 18th weeks of pregnancy. If the ban is judged constitutional, there may be no legal way to terminate certain pregnancies, no matter how grave the birth defect discovered.

The ban would also prevent doctors from providing a D & X procedure in certain circumstances when it’s considered the safer option, such as cases involving preeclampsia or some cancers. As Eve Gartner, lead counsel for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, explained to the justices, “In some cases…[it] averts uterine perforation, it averts the spread of sepsis or infection; it [potentially] averts the spread of…malignant cancer throughout the woman’s body. … This Court has never recognized a state interest that was sufficient to trump the woman’s interest in her health.”