Court orders abortion curb applied in Missouri

Associated Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 23, 2007

Washington (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court today ordered that its decision last week to uphold the ban on a disputed abortion procedure must be applied to a long-delayed lawsuit in Missouri.

The two-sentence order threw out a 2005 ruling from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down a Missouri ban on certain late-term abortions -- called partial birth abortion by opponents -- that lower courts had concluded lacked an exception for the health of pregnant women.

In a 5-4 decision last week, the high court said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

It was the first time the court banned a specific abortion procedure.

The 1999 Missouri law sought to ban the procedure, generally performed in the second or third trimester, but it was put on hold by a federal judge one day after the Legislature enacted it by overriding a gubernatorial veto.

The invalidated Missouri law created the crime of "infanticide," defined as intentionally causing the death of a baby "when the infant is partially born or born." Doctors violating the ban could have been charged with a felony similar to murder.

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon had appealed the 8th Circuit's ruling. Nixon spokesman Scott Holste said Nixon planned to file a motion today asking the 8th Circuit to vacate its injunction against enforcing the Missouri law. That would allow the state law to take effect immediately.

The Missouri law could take effect immediately if the appeals court decides it is constitutional.

Doctors who violate the federal law face up to two years in prison. The law had never taken effect, pending the outcome of the legal fight.

The high court's ruling is expected to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions.

The case is and Nixon v. Reproductive Health Services, 05-1124.

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