Related articles:

Justices hear graphic details of 'partial-birth' abortion

Health Care
Sierra Tucson
Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION General
A1 Communications
Cable Techs

When the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act today, it will consider a variation of a centuries-old constitutional question: Who gets the final say, Congress or the court?

Six years ago, the court threw out Nebraska's ban on a procedure generally used in the second trimester of pregnancy because it didn't make an exception to protect a woman's health. Now the court will examine a federal law attempting to override that ruling by declaring the procedure is never medically necessary.

The case raises fundamental separation-of-powers questions, asking whether lawmakers can substitute their factual conclusions for those of the court.

"Congress said to the Supreme Court, 'We don't care what you say about the constitutional requirements for women's health,' " said Nancy Northup, president of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which is challenging the law signed by President Bush in 2003.

The 2000 Nebraska case, Stenberg v. Carhart, made it a crime for doctors to perform abortion procedures known formally as intact dilation and evacuation, or intact D&E, and dilation and extraction, or D&X.

Writing for a five-justice majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said the law created a "significant health risk" by barring the procedure even when a doctor concluded it would protect a woman's fertility or prevent complications.

Breyer said an exception was needed "where substantial medical authority supports the proposition that banning a particular abortion procedure could endanger women's health."

The court also said the "partial birth" statute was so broadly worded that it would outlaw another technique that is the most common method used by doctors for second-trimester abortions.

Congress reacted to the ruling by passing the federal ban, imposing prison terms of up to two years on doctors violating it. The federal law modified the Nebraska statute's definition of the banned procedure in a bid to resolve questions about how broadly it would apply.

The statute also declared that a "moral, medical and ethical consensus" exists that the practice is "never medically necessary."

Backers say Congress based that conclusion on almost a decade of study that included testimony by doctors and patients, and statements by medical organizations.

The three federal trial judges and three appeals courts that have reviewed the law all concluded it is unconstitutional based on the Nebraska ruling.