Latest abortion law very broad

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The doctor who persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion testified yesterday that a similar federal law is so vague that it would outlaw nearly all abortions after the first trimester.

“There are at least 21 different procedures that it covers,” Dr. LeRoy Carhart said during a challenge of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, signed last year by President Bush. “There are terms in this act that I do not understand … and that have many definitions.”

The new law has not been enforced because judges in Lincoln, New York and San Francisco agreed to hear evidence in three simultaneous nonjury trials on whether the ban violates the Constitution.

During the procedure, also known as “intact dilation and extraction” or D&X, a fetus is partially removed from the woman, then its skull is punctured and brain sucked out.

The Bush administration has argued that the procedure is “inhumane and gruesome” and causes the fetus to suffer pain.

The new law prohibits doctors from committing an “overt act” to kill a partially delivered fetus. But Dr. Carhart said that could be interpreted as covering more common procedures, including “dilatation and evacuation” (D&E).

D&E is the most common method of second-trimester abortion. About 140,000 D&Es are done in the United States annually, compared with an estimated 2,200 to 5,000 D&X procedures.

“This act covers every D&E that I did,” Dr. Carhart said. “Everything that I do to cause an abortion is an overt act.”

Dr. Carhart said at least once a month, an entire fetus is expelled from the mother during a D&E he is performing.

“The fetuses are alive at the time of delivery,” he said. There is a heartbeat “very frequently.”

Dr. Carhart earlier brought a challenge that eventually led the Supreme Court in 2000 to overturn Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion. The high court said the Nebraska law and others like it were an “undue burden” on women’s rights.

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, who is presiding over the trial in Lincoln, also presided over Dr. Carhart’s challenge to the Nebraska ban.

Under the federal law, doctors can get up to two years in prison.

The issue is expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.