Abortion law blocked

last updated 8 January 2015

New York

Judges in New York, California, and Nebraska last week blocked the government from enforcing a ban on partial-birth abortions, just days after President Bush signed it into law. The rulings temporarily prohibit the government from prosecuting most abortion clinics and doctors under the new rules. Opponents of the ban said it was unconstitutional, because it included no exception to protect a woman’s health. But Bush and a wide majority in Congress said there was never a justification for the procedure, in which a fetus is partially delivered and then killed. Bush said that the law—the first ban on an abortion procedure since the Supreme Court established the abortion right in 1973—would protect “the inalienable right of life.”