On April 18, 2007 the United States Supreme Court turned back the clock on women's health and reproductive rights. In a 5-4 decision that puts politics before women's health, the Court upheld the first-ever federal ban on abortion - called by its sponsors the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003."
The ban contains an exception only to save a woman's life, and does not provide an exception to protect a woman's health or an adequate exception to save a woman's life. In upholding the ban, the Supreme Court disregarded the opinions of leading doctors and medical organizations that opposed the ban because of its threat to women's health. By finding the ban constitutional, the Court undermined a long-standing core principle of Roe v. Wade that women's health must remain paramount and such restrictions require exceptions to preserve a woman's health.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, used disturbing rhetoric about women's place in society and called into question women's decision-making ability. The Court made it clear that the Court would defer to legislators' opinions rather than doctors' experiences, allowing politicians to trump doctors. Additionally, and for the first time, the Court held that the "State's interest in promoting respect for human life at all stages in the pregnancy" could outweigh the woman's interest in protecting her own health. This is a radical departure from more than 30 years of precedent holding that a woman's health is paramount.
This was the first decision about abortion to be issued since Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote an impassioned dissent for the minority and denounced the ruling as "alarming," noting that, "for the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman's health." She wrote, women's "ability to realize their full potential . . . is intimately connected to 'their ability to control their reproductive lives.'" And she concluded that "the Act, and the Court's defense of it, cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by the Court - and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."
This decision will have far-reaching consequences and puts women's health at risk. Individual states may now take advantage of this decision and pass even more intrusive legislation in the coming years.
> Read NAF's April 18, 2007 joint release with the ACLU on the Supreme Court's decision
> Read more about the recent Supreme Court Decision
> Read NAF's Amicus brief
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