By Kyle Peveto, Page Editor
A ban on a procedure labeled by its opponents as “partial-birth” abortion was passed by the Senate last week and received support from most students.
The ban will affect abortions conducted in the second or third trimester where the fetus is partially delivered before being aborted.
The bill, expected to be signed by President Bush into law, is already facing lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union and abortion rights groups.
Attorneys for the ACLU said last week that the case could take three years to work through the courts.
Nationally, the abortion ban brought mixed reactions split between Democrats and Republicans, though 17 Democrats split to join Republicans in the Senate vote. Locally, many support the prospective ban.
“Rarely, under any circumstance is there a need to do a partial birth abortion as it relates to a woman’s health,” said Paul Blankenship, executive director of the Pregnancy Counseling Center.
Blankenship said the three-day procedure is not an emergency procedure and 95 percent of these abortions are elective.
Many students in interviews supported the ban, including Brock Rutherford, junior marketing and management major from Amarillo.
“I disagree with abortion anyway, and eliminating some abortion is a good step,” he said.
Proponents of the procedure say the ban will endanger the lives of many women and fear the ban to be a direct hit to the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion. The Supreme Court rejected a similar ban enacted by Nebraska in 2000.
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The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was passed by the Senate, 64-34, Oct. 21.
The House passed the ban Oct. 2, by a 281-142 vote.
President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law.
A similar law passed in Nebraska was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2000.
The bill defines “partial birth abortion” as a process in which a doctor delivers a fetus to where it is mostly outside the womb and aborts it by puncturing the back of the skull and sucking out the fetus’ brain.
