Partial birth abortion
Partial birth abortion, also known by the medical term "Intact dilation and extraction", is a late-term abortive procedure in which all of a fetus (except for the head) is removed from the womb through the cervix (the same pathway through which birth occurs; hence the name), and is then killed. The procedure is a relatively uncommon one, but has become an important battleground within the greater abortion controversy. [1]
Congress passed laws to ban the procedure in 1996 and 1997, but the bill was vetoed by President Clinton, on the [2]. The United States Congress enacted the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act [3] in 2003 and President Bush signed it into law.
The Supreme Court upheld the ban by a 5 to 4 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, on 18 April 2007.
From PriestsForLife.org [4] The ban prohibits:
"knowingly perform[ing] a partial-birth abortion...that is [not] necessary to save the life of the mother," 18 U.S.C. Section 1531(a). It defines "partial-birth abortion," Section 1531(b)(1), as a procedure in which the doctor: "(A) deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the [mother's] body..., or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunck past the navel is outside the [mother's] body..., for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus"; and "(B) performs the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the fetus."
