NEBRASKA PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN ON THE LINE

The highest court in the land is considering Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban. Back in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled women have a constitutional right to end their pregnancies. Nebraska is one of 30 states that ban partial-birth abortions, and it is seeking reinstatement of a law that would make it a crime for doctors to perform the surgical procedure.

Comments from the justices during oral arguments were particularly discouraging. Six of the nine justices voiced concern over Nebraska's law. Opponents of the law in Nebraska, where partial-birth abortions are regularly performed, see partial-birth abortion as nothing short of murder. They have a point. (Partial-birth abortions also are banned in Missouri, but there is no documentation that the procedure has been performed in this state.)

Partial-birth abortions are performed in the third trimester, when most babies could survive on their own. If a baby is born anytime in the third trimester and then killed, police make arrests and prosecutors file murder charges. Surely a woman who decides to get an abortion can do so early on in her pregnancy. There is no reason to wait until a few weeks before the expected delivery date.

Fetuses that survive 20 weeks in the womb and beyond are treated differently in Missouri and most other states. When a fetus dies in the 20th week of gestation or later, the state requires a fetal death certificate. A handful of states, such as New York, require a death certificate to be filed when any pregnancy, no matter how short-lived, ends in the death of the fetus.

In the oral arguments, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia were clearly sympathetic to the Nebraska law. Scalia discussed the horror of partial-birth abortions, which he repeatedly described as taking a living, unborn child from the uterus and killing it.

Instead of getting lost in legal rhetoric, it would be refreshing if the panel could consider partial-birth abortions on a strictly humanitarian level. The procedure involves partially extracting a fetus from the uterus into the birth canal, where the skull is cut and its contents drained.

It is interesting to note that a 1992 Supreme Court ruling allows states to ban all abortions. If the high court comes down against partial-birth abortions, the nation may see some states moving toward that total ban.

The question remains: If states have the right to ban all abortions, why can't they say no to partial-birth abortions? These procedures are nothing short of gruesome, especially when they involve babies that could live outside the womb.