WASHINGTON • The Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5-4 decision April 18.     The ruling was lauded by abortion opponents, including President George W. Bush, who called partial-birth abortion an “abhorrent procedure” in a statement from the White House.
    He said, “Today’s decision affirms that the Constitution does not stand in the way of the people’s representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of America.
    The partial-birth abortion ban, which an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress passed and I signed into law, represents a commitment to building a culture of life in America.”

    He signed it into law in 2003, but because of court challenges it never went into effect.

    “The Supreme Court’s decision is an affirmation of the progress we have made over the past six years in protecting human dignity and upholding the sanctity of life. We will continue to work for the day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law.”

    Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority opinion in the Gonzalez v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood cases, said the law’s opponents “have not demonstrated that the act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases.”
    Also voting in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
    Voting in the minority were Justices Paul Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.

    In her dissenting opinion, Ginsburg said the decision “tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.” She added the decision “refuses to take ... seriously” previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion.

    Six federal courts had ruled the act had unconstitutionally restricted a woman’s legal right to an abortion. In October the Supreme Court accepted cases from California — the Planned Parenthood case — and Nebraska — the Dr. Leroy Carhart case. The high court conducted oral arguments in November.

    In what the law calls partial-birth abortion, also referred to as an “intact dilation and extraction,” a live fetus is partially delivered and an incision is made at the base of the skull, through which the brain is removed, and then the dead body is delivered the rest of the way.
  
    In the 1990s, Congress had twice passed a ban on partial-birth abortions. Both times the bills were vetoed by Bill Clinton.
    In 2003, Congress again passed a ban on partial-birth abortions, and the bill was signed into law by Bush.
    In 2000, the Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska ban on partial-birth abortions. Writing for a 5-4 majority at that time, Breyer said the law imposed an undue burden on a woman’s right to make an abortion decision. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died in September 2005, and now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor were both on the high court at the time this ruling was issued. O’Connor sided with the majority, and Rehnquist with the minority. Kennedy’s majority opinion said there was “medical disagreement whether the act’s prohibition would ever impose significant health risks on women” — a prohibition based in significant part on the finding that the procedure was never medically necessary — and that other procedures exist to abort late-term pregnancies.

    A brief separate opinion written by Thomas and joined by Scalia said they wanted to reiterate their view that “the court’s abortion jurisprudence ... has no basis in the Constitution.”