Gonzales V Carhart

Queer Democrats Warned About Threats to Reproductive Choice

The predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club heard two presentations at its June 23 meeting: a report on the likely strike by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) against southern California’s three largest grocery chains — Ralph’s, Albertson’s and Vons — and a warning about the potentially devastating effects of Republican and radical-Right policies against women’s rights to reproductive choice. Though the struggles of women to maintain safe and legal access to contraception and abortion may seem to have little in common with those of workers for decent pay, access to health care and other benefits, speakers on both issues noted how the radical Right has effectively linked them in the service of a paternalistic agenda that regards workers as mere cogs in a capitalist economy, and women as mere vessels for giving birth to the next generation. The predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club heard two presentations at its June 23 meeting: a report on the likely strike by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) against southern California’s three largest grocery chains — Ralph’s, Albertson’s and Vons — and a warning about the potentially devastating effects of Republican and radical-Right policies against women’s rights to reproductive choice. Though the struggles of women to maintain safe and legal access to contraception and abortion may seem to have little in common with those of workers for decent pay, access to health care and other benefits, speakers on both issues noted how the radical Right has effectively linked them in the service of a paternalistic agenda that regards workers as mere cogs in a capitalist economy, and women as mere vessels for giving birth to the next generation. The panel on reproductive choice was introduced by Jacqueline Palmer, the club’s membership chair, who said that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives “rejected the idea that people have the right to control their own bodies” when they voted overwhelmingly last February to bar all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. “In their attempts to gut Title X funding [the basic federal funding for women’s health clinics, ironically signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970], House Republicans voted to let more people die of breast and cervical cancer and AIDS. Right-wing attacks on collective bargaining rights, same-sex marriage and reproductive choice are part of a united campaign.

Gonzales v. Carhart | The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College ...

In 2003, Congress passed and the President signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The controversial concept of partial-birth abortion is defined in the Act as any abortion in which the death of the fetus occurs when "the entire fetal head [...] or [...] any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother." Dr. Leroy Carhart and other physicians who perform late-term abortions sued to stop the Act from going into effect. The plaintiffs argued that the Act could apply to a more common abortion procedure known as "D&E;" ("dilation and evacuation"), as well as to the less common "intact D&E;," sometimes called D&X; ("dilation and extraction"). With this application the Act would ban most late-term abortions and thus be an unconstitutional "undue burden" on the right to an abortion, as defined by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey , regardless of Congress's finding in the Act that partial-birth abortions are never medically necessary.

A federal District Court agreed and ruled the Act unconstitutional on both grounds. The government appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The government argued that the Act only bans a narrow category of abortion procedures, and that a health exception is not required when Congress determines that a banned abortion procedure is never necessary for the health of the mother. The Eighth Circuit disagreed and upheld the District Court, ruling that a health exception is required for all bans on abortion procedures when "substantial medical authority" supports the necessity of the procedure. The Circuit Court ruled that the ongoing disagreement among medical experts over the necessity of intact D&E; abortions was sufficient to establish that the Act was unconstitutional without a health exception. The Circuit Court did not reach the question of whether the Act was so broad as to qualify as an unconstitutional "undue burden."

No. The Court ruled by a 5-4 vote that Congress's ban on partial-birth abortion was not unconstitutionally vague and did not impose an undue burden on the right to an abortion. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion for the majority. The Court held that, under the most reasonable interpretation, the Act applies only to the intact D&E; method (also known as "partial-birth abortion") and not to the more common D&E; procedure.