To the editor:

On June 28, 2000, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a ban on a procedure the right wing has, in typical emotive and mendacious fashion, dubbed “partial-birth” abortion. Apparently, proponents of such bans didn’t get the court’s clear message the first time, as the House and Senate have recently passed another equally unconstitutional ban.

The term “partial-birth” abortion was invented by anti-choice activists to describe a late-term abortion procedure actually called dilation and extraction. The ban’s proponents hope the public is sufficiently uninformed to believe the ban is focused solely on preventing late-term dilation and extraction procedures. The ban’s broad sweep is actually intended to restrict women’s access to abortion in the early phases of pregnancy and would apply to the most commonly used method in pre-viability second-trimester abortions.

In addition to being misleading and politically driven, the bill also is unconstitutional; it doesn’t include an exception for the woman’s health. In Stenberg v. Carhart, the Supreme Court ruled abortion restrictions must include such an exception in order to be constitutionally sound.

Finally, women, their families and their physicians, not politicians, should decide how to best protect the life and health of women, a position fully endorsed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

As Kate Michelman observed, this ban “sacrifices women’s health and future fertility on the altar of extreme right-wing ideology.” It is as unconstitutional as its predecessors, and it should be struck down.

Lydia Krebs,

Lawrence