Supreme Court upholds law banning some abortions

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld for the first time a nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure, a ruling critics denounced as undermining 30 years of precedent protecting women's health.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003 after its approval by the Republican-led U.S. Congress does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The ruling could open the door to further abortion restrictions and it came in the first full term of Bush's two Supreme Court appointees, signaling a possible new direction on a divisive social issue that could continue long after Bush leaves office.

The decision by the conservative majority that included both of Bush's appointees marked the first federal ban on an abortion procedure to be upheld since the court's landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that women have a basic constitutional right to abortion.

The majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy rejected the argument the law must be struck down because it imposed an undue burden on a woman's right to abortion, that it was too vague or broad and it failed to provide an exception for abortions to protect the health of a pregnant woman.

"The government has a legitimate and substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life," Kennedy wrote in the 39-page opinion. He said the law would reduce the number of late-term abortions.

The court's four liberals -- Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer -- dissented.

Ginsburg called the decision alarming and took the rare step of reading parts of her dissent from the bench.

"The court's opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists," she said.

"For the first time since Roe, the court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health," Ginsburg said.

The upheld law makes it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion when the "entire fetal head" or "any part of the fetal trunk past the navel" is outside the woman's uterus.

Some doctors have described the surgical procedure, which typically takes place after the first three months of pregnancy, as the safest method because it reduces the risk of bleeding, infection and other health consequences. It is known medically as intact dilation and extraction.

TEST CASES FOR ROBERTS, ALITO

The ruling was widely viewed as the most important of the court's 2006-07 term. It had been closely watched as tests of whether Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, would restrict abortion rights. Both voted to uphold the law.

Abortion rights advocates called the decision a stunning reversal that effectively overturned 30 years of precedent, while Bush and other supporters of the law hailed the ruling.