June (Web-only) 2003

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Congress enacts first abortion restriction since Roe v. Wade
After a U.S. House of Representatives vote last night (roll call), the federal government will finally ban partial-birth abortions, or what some abortion rights supporters call "dilation and extraction."

"After eight long years, Congress will finally send the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act to a president willing to sign it," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told The Washington Times. "The debate over the rights of the unborn will continue, and new battles will be fought. But in the meantime, the American people will take this one stand … on behalf of the innocent."

Actually, notes The Washington Post, it's not just the debate over the rights of the unborn that will continue. Opponents of the bill "have vowed to challenge the measure in court, noting that three years ago the Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Nebraska."

But the Family Research Council has a briefing on how the language in H.R. 760 explicitly fits with the Supreme Court's 2000 Stenberg v. Carhart ruling. "It will be imperative that Attorney General John Ashcroft mount a vigorous defense of the law," FRC President Ken Connor says in a separate press release. (The FRC also has a briefing on partial-birth abortion myths,

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Despite the looming court battle, both sides of the abortion debate agree that this is huge news. "It is monumental in that it represents the first real restriction on any form of abortion enacted into law in 30 years," Connor told the Associated Press.

NARAL Pro-Choice America president Kate Michelman agrees: "President Bush and anti-choice leaders in the Congress have crossed the Rubicon towards rolling back Roe."

The Senate passed a similar bill back in March, and President ...