National Press Club Event on Conscience Regulations TODAY

Today at 10:00 AM at the National Press Club, medical professionals who have experienced discrimination as a result of their exercise of their conscience will talk about their stories and urge the Administration to protect their rights and not rescind the HHS regulations protecting rights of conscience.

Freedom2Care, a coalition of organizations (including CLS) that support conscience rights in the medical profession, will also announce the results of 2 national polls gauging popular support for conscience rights and the existing HHS conscience protection regulations that the Obama Administration has proposed to rescind.

I will be in attendance and available to answer any questions about the lawsuits filed in Connecticut challenging the HHS regulations.

If you have not yet commented to HHS in support of the existing HHS regulations and in opposition to the proposed rescission of these protections you can do so through the Freedom2Care website. The deadline is midnight TOMORROW, April 9.

Tell the Obama Administration to Enforce Laws Protecting Conscience Rights

As previously noted, the Department of Health and Human Services has now moved to rescind the federal regulations prohibiting federal grantees from discriminating against medical professionals and institutions that decline to perform or refer for abortions or against medical students that do not wish to train in the performance of abortions. The proposed rescission has now been published in the federal register, triggering a 30 day period for public comment on rescinding this rule. Despite earlier media statements from unnamed HHS officials, the Administration has not proposed simply to "clarify" the rule, but have proposed completely throwing out the conscience protection rule altogether.

The conscience protection rule imposes no new obligations on federal grantees, but requires HHS grantees to certify that they will comply with three federal laws, the Church Amendments, Coats-Snowe Amendment, and Weldon Amendment. It also provides for a process by which a medical professional or institution may report their discriminatory treatment to HHS so that the agency may take action.

HHS previously explained that the rule was necessary, in part, because grantees and the public are unaware of these statutory protections - a fact confirmed in the lawsuits CLRF has been involved in defending medical conscience rights. HHS also explained that discriminatory treatment of medical professionals and institutions also threatened access to health care by driving pro-life medical professionals from the profession and causing faith-centered medical institutions (like Catholic hospitals) to close their doors rather than perform abortions.

The public, whether medical professionals, patients, or others interested, are invited to file public comments on the proposed rescission of the HHS rule. While stories of discrimination you or others have faced is helpful, ANY comment, even a few sentences, is helpful.

A website [http://www.freedom2care.org/] has been created to help facilitate complaints of discrimination and submission of comments to HHS in support of the existing regulations and in opposition to their rescission. You can also share the link with your facebook and twitter friends.

Comments are due by April 8, but do it today!

Breaking: Obama to Remove Anti-Discrimination Protections for Pro-Life Doctors

Per the LA Times - Pres. Obama will move to rescind the HHS regulation protecting medical professionals and institutions from discrimination on the basis that they do not perform, assist in or refer for abortions. No notice of rulemaking has been filed yet, but more updates will be provided when it is issued.

The regulations at issue, codified at 45 CFR Part 88, were enacted by the Bush Administration in response to recent evidence that federal grantees were unaware of or not complying with decades of federal laws protecting the rights of conscience of medical professionals. You can read more about the regulations here.

The Center currently represents the Christian Medical Association, Catholic Medical Association, and American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists as intervenors defending the regulations in three lawsuits brought in federal district court in Connecticut. You can read more about the lawsuits here.

A Philosophical Case for Conscience

Writing in the Public Discourse, Prof. Christopher O. Tollefsen presents a philosophical case for the protection of the right of conscience, discussing abortion and the pro-life physician:

In sum, under extremely serious circumstances, the state can forbid what is otherwise taken to be obligatory. But the state should never command that an agent do something that an agent takes himself to be forbidden from doing by an exceptionless moral norm, and, it seems, the state should make a considerable effort to protect its citizens from demands by others that they violate their conscience in this way. . . . Another straightforward consequence is that citizens opposed in principle to participating in abortion should not be compelled by the laws of the state to violate what they take to be exceptionless negative precepts. There can be no weak form of intrinsice malum in this domain.

Prof. Michael Stokes Paulsen legal memo on the consequences of the Freedom of Choice Act

Prof. Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas School of Law has written a detailed 4000 word legal memorandum describing the consequences of the Freedom of Choice Act on Moral Accountability, a new website providing scholarly analysis of the Obama administration's policies as they relate to abortion and same-sex marriage.

From the conclusion:

While there is room for uncertainty or disagreement concerning a
few issues, in the main, FOCA’s legal effects are clear. FOCA would
invalidate nearly every state and federal law bearing on, or attempting to
influence, the exercise of a choice of abortion. FOCA would invalidate
nearly every state or federal law substantively disfavoring abortion in the
provision of benefits, services, and information. FOCA would invalidate
nearly every state or federal law protecting the conscience of medical workers
or religious hospitals from participating in abortion. FOCA would likely
invalidate nearly any state law prohibiting partial birth abortion. And
FOCA would entrench abortion rights against further meaningful legal challenge.

Advocates International moves to intervene in federal conscience case on behalf of Concerned Women for America and four pro-life medical asociations

Yesterday, attorneys for Advocates International moved to intervene in the federal lawsuit challenging the conscience regulation on behalf of the women's advocacy group Concerned Women for America as well as four pro-life medical associations, Christian Pharmacists Fellowship International, Care Net, Heartbeat International and the New Jersey Physicians Resource Council.

Read their press release and the motion to intervene and the supporting brief.

As discussed earlier, Center and ADF attorneys represent the first group of proposed intervenors Catholic Medical Association, Christian Medical Association, and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

President Obama Funds Overseas Abortions

A provision of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits the use of federal funds "to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning, or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." In what has come to be called the "Mexico City Policy," President Reagan instructed the US Agency for International Development to comply with this statutory directive in 1984. President Clinton rescinded the policy, but President George W. Bush reinstated it.

Yesterday, President Obama again rescinded the Mexico City Policy, thereby allowing nongovernmental organizations working overseas to encourage women to have abortions and to lobby foreign governments to eliminate legal protections of unborn children.

Millions of Americans don't want their tax dollars used to facilitate the killing of babies in their mothers' wombs. President Obama subordinated those Americans' desires to the objectives of the pro-abortion organizations. This is not an auspicious beginning for a president whom many thought (erroneously, in my view) would be comparatively moderate on sanctity of life issues.

FRC's comment is here. National Right to Life comments here. US Conference of Catholic Bishops comments here.

CLS Center and ADF attorneys move to intervene in conscience regulation lawsuit on behalf of pro-life medical associations

On behalf of pro-life professional medical associations, attorneys for the CLS Center for Law & Religious Freedom and the Alliance Defense Fund have filed motions to intervene in three lawsuits challenging a regulation that protects the medical professional right of conscience. View the press release here.

Last week, Planned Parenthood, a group of states including Connecticut, and the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought lawsuits seeking to invalidate a Health & Human Services regulation that protects doctors and other medical professionals from being forced to participate in abortions against their consciences.

CLS and ADF attorneys represent the Catholic Medical Association, the Christian Medical Association, and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The complaints, briefs in support of motion for intervention, and the proposed answers for the respective cases are available from the CLS Center:

Connecticut v. United States

NFPRHA v. Leavitt

Planned Parenthood v. Leavitt

The Center previously submitted comments on behalf of the Christian Legal Society and the Fellowship of Christian Physician Assistants in support of the enactment of this rule.

CLS and ADF attorneys also successfully defended against two challenges to the Weldon Amendment, which is one the three underlying statutes implemented by the regulation; that is, California v. United States (press release), and National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association v. Gonzales (press release).

HHS Issues New Conscience Regs

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued final regulations protecting healthcare workers from being forced to perform or assist in abortions against their conscience. The full text of the regulations are available here.

The Center for Law & Religious Freedom filed comments on the proposed rules in September on behalf of the Christian Legal Society and the Fellowship of Christian Physician Assistants. The Center's comments pointed out that the proposed rule did not add any additional obligations to employers but merely required them to certify that they complied with federal conscience protections with which they have been required by law to comply for decades. A previous post on the Center's comment is available here.

Despite the fact that the regulations impose no new legal obligations on federal grantees, the Center's comment pointed out that the State of California, Planned Parenthood of California, the California Medical Association, and the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association had all evidenced ignorance of existing federal laws protecting the conscience rights of healthcare workers in two federal court cases challenging the Weldon Amendment. In both of those cases, California v. United States, and National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association v. Gonzales, the Center for Law and Religious Freedom served as counsel for intervening pro-life medical groups defending the Weldon Amendment. The federal courts sided with the Center and the medical groups in both cases.

The new rule will take effect 30 days from tomorrow, Dec. 19. It will require federal grantees to specifically certify that they comply with the Church Amendment, Coats-Snowe Amendment to the Public Health Services Act, and the Weldon Amendment.

Prof. Rick Garnett on Prof. Doug Kmiec

Prof. Rick Garnett, a friend of CLS's Center for Law & Religious Freedom, has an insightful post about Prof. Doug Kmiec's apparently changing views on abortion here.

From the Presidential Debates: the "Health of the Mother" Canard Demonstrated.

In last night's presidential debate, Senator John McCain criticized Barack Obama for his opposition to proscriptions on abortion, including partial birth abortion. Obama countered that he had only opposed a Partial Birth Abortion Ban because it did not include an exception for cases where it was necessary to protect the "health of the mother."

Planned Parenthood has argued strenuously that the partial birth abortion procedure -- in which a child is pulled up to halfway outside the birth canal before its skull is crushed, it's brains sucked out, and it is delivered dead -- is necessary to protect a woman's health. In Gonzales v. Carhart the Supreme Court turned away a facial challenge to the law, holding that this procedure was unnecessary to protect a woman's health, deferring to Congress's finding after extensive hearings that the procedure was never necessary to protect a woman's health. However, the Court left open the possibility of as-applied challenges to the PBA ban if a woman's health was ever threatened by the unavailability of the procedure. Justice Ginsburg invited and predicted such challenges.

But after 18 months no such challenge has been brought. 547 days have now passed after the Supreme Court's decision upholding the PBA Ban and permitting it to go into effect. By Planned Parenthood's estimates, likely very low, six partial birth abortions were occurring daily prior to this decision. By these figures, 3,282 partial birth abortions have NOT occurred since the Supreme Court allowed the statute to go into effect without a health exception. Yet, not a single as-applied challenge has been brought claiming that the PBA Ban endangered a woman's health in a specific case.

I have discussed this point previously here and here. Again, either women have experienced a remarkable streak of luck in the past 18 months, the abortion advocacy groups are terribly understaffed in their legal departments, or Planned Parenthood and others were lying about the medical necessity of partial birth abortion. But in any case, someone now arguing for such an exception should bear the burden to demonstrate why the lack of a health exception for partial birth abortions has been a burden on women for the past 18 months.

HHS Conscience Regulations - Your Comment Needed by September 25

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has issued proposed regulations that would require most recipients of HHS funds to certify that they comply with federal laws protecting the conscience rights of pro-life medical professionals. For over three decades the Church Amendment has prohibited recipients of HHS funding from compelling employees to participate in activities that violate their conscience. Two other federal statutes, the Coats-Snowe Amendment to the Public Health Services Act, enacted in 1996, and the Weldon Amendment, an appropriations rider first enacted in 2004, prohibit federal and state governments and other recipients of certain federal funds from discriminating against medical professionals who do not perform or refer for abortions.

Despite these clear protections of the rights of conscience of pro-life medical professionals, those on the ground see a different story. Medical students and professionals report pressure to perform, be trained to perform, or to otherwise be involved in assisting with abortions. (Link is to website of the Christian Medical Association which CLS has represented in defending its members’ conscience rights.) Moreover, CLRF’s own experience defending the Weldon Amendment illustrated the utter lack of understanding that some of the largest grantees of federal funds (including the State of California and abortion advocacy groups) have of their own obligations not to discriminate against pro-life medical professionals. The existing federal laws prohibiting the rampant discrimination in the healthcare profession are simply being ignored. The Department’s proposed regulations are urgently needed in order to ensure that pro-life physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and others are able to remain in the practice and that the next generation of medical professionals can enter the profession with the confidence that they will not be forced to choose between their career and their conscience.

Please take the time to submit a brief comment encouraging Secretary Leavitt to issue the proposed regulations. The email address is consciencecomment@hhs.gov. You may also go to www.Regulations.gov, click on the link “comment or submission” and enter the keywords “provider conscience” to submit a comment there. THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING COMMENTS IS THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2008.

As abortion advocates have launched postcard campaigns opposing the regulations, any comment is helpful, even if just a brief 1-2 sentences urging their adoption. Of course, if you can relate an example of your own or a friend or client’s discriminatory treatment for their exercise of their rights of conscience that would be particularly helpful. And please encourage others to do the same. Some additional points you may want to make are below:

• The Department should enforce existing conscience protections, passed with bipartisan support and on the books for as long as three decades.
• Discrimination against pro-life medical professionals does not expand access to abortion. It drives a critical segment of the medical workforce from the profession, diminishing access to medical care and increasing costs.
• Urge the Secretary to interpret the existing regulations to explicitly protect medical professionals from being forced to dispense or refer for chemical abortifacients like RU-486 and “Plan B.”

HHS Secretary Leavitt Blogs on Medical Professionals' Conscience Rights, Possible Regulatory Protections

A couple of weeks ago, Greg blogged about a New York Times article describing a leaked proposed rule from inside the Department of Health and Human Services. The rule, if adopted, would protect require recipients of federal funds to certify in writing that they adhere to the three federal statutes prohibiting discrimination against healthcare workers who refuse to perform abortions.

On August 9, Secretary Leavitt posted an entry on his blog explaining that the draft regulation would not, as the abortion lobby would like to frighten people into believing, "define contraception as abortion." He explained:

"The Bush Administration has consistently supported the unborn. However, the issue I asked to be addressed in this regulation is not abortion or contraceptives, but the legal right medical practitioners have to practice according to their conscience and patients should be able to choose a doctor who has beliefs like his or hers."

Today he has posted a new entry noting that "with the help of Planned Parenthood, my blog -- for the first time -- received more visits than my teenage son’s MySpace page." He goes on to explain that he did find one comment from Mary Gallagher, President of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Ass'n, helpful. Ms. Gallagher said that IF the regulation is adopted, medical professionals "get to pick and choose what they want to do." Secretary Leavitt responded:

"So, according to Ms. Gallagher’s ideology, if a person goes to medical school they lose their right of conscience. Freedom of expression and action is surrendered with the issuance of a medical degree.

There is something I’d like to point out to Ms Gallagher and the people she represents. It is currently a violation of three separate federal laws to compel medical practitioners to perform a procedure that violates their conscience.

Obviously, some disagree with the federal law and would have it otherwise, so they have begun using the accreditation standards of physician professional organizations to define the exercise of conscience unprofessional and thereby make doctors choose between their capacity to practice in good standing and their right of conscience. In my view, that is simply unfair and a clear effort to subvert the law in favor of their ideology.

This is not a discussion about the rights of a woman to get an abortion. The courts have long ago identified that right and continue to define its limits. This regulation would not be aimed at changing or redefining any of that. This is about the right of a doctor to not participate if he or she chooses for reasons they consider a matter of conscience. Does the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association believe we can protect by Constitution, statute and practice rights of free speech, race, religion, and abortion—but not conscience?

Is the fear here that so many doctors will refuse that it will somehow make it difficult for a woman to get an abortion? That hasn’t happened, but what if it did? Wouldn’t that be an important and legitimate social statement?

I want to reiterate. If the Department of Health and Human Services issues a regulation on this matter, it will aim at one thing, protecting the right of conscience of those who practice medicine. From what I’ve read the last few days, there’s a serious need for it."

Exactly. I encourage you to go to Secretary Leavitt's blog and urge the Secretary to issue the proposed regulation protecting the conscience rights of medical professionals. Were there any doubt that it is necessary to remind abortion advocacy groups receiving federal grants that they cannot force medical professionals to perform abortions against their conscience, the abortion lobby's own reaction to these draft regulations eliminates those doubts.

Proposed Rule Would Protect Conscience Rights

The New York Times reports that Bush Administration will reportedly propose a rule protecting the consciences of health care providers who, for moral and religious reasons, decline to participate in abortion.

The Times article quotes a representative of National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, whose hostility to conscience rights was apparent in its (unsuccessful) legal challenge to the Weldon Amendment, a federal statute that protects conscience rights. The Center intervened in that challenge on behalf of pro-life medical professionals.

Ninth Circuit protects conscience rights of pharmacists

In the case of Stormans v. Selecky, as reported on Religion Clause the Ninth Circuit kept in place the preliminary injunction barring enforcement of challenged pharmacy board rules thereby protecting the constitutional rights of pharmacists who, informed by their religious or moral beliefs, are bound by conscience to refrain from distributing the abortion-inducing Plan B contraceptive. The case continues with oral argument on June 3 in Seattle.

Yesterday the CLS Center filed an amicus brief supporting the pharmacists on behalf of Christian Legal Society, Christian Pharmacists Fellowship International, Christian Medical Association, American Association of Pro Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and Fellowship of Christian Physician Assistants.

So, I ask again. Was Planned Parenthood Lying?

Or perhaps they're just understaffed?

One year ago last Friday, on April 18, 2007, the Supreme Court rejected facial challenges to the constitutionality of the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban. Before and after the Court's ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart, Planned Parenthood attorneys had warned that permitting the ban on partial birth abortions to go into effect would threaten women's health. Expressing the same concerns, Justice Ginsburg predicted and invited as-applied challenges to the PBA ban to protect womens' health.

Ninety-seven days after the decision I noted here that it was odd then that Planned Parenthood had not brought such an as-applied challenge. After all, according to Planned Parenthood, 6 partial birth abortions were occurring per day. Assuming the truth of this figure - and it was likely a gross understatement - there have now been 2232 partial birth abortions that have NOT happened as a result of the Court's decision last April. Ed Whalen also notes that the attempted explanations for Planned Parenthood's failure to bring an as applied challenge on behalf of one of these thousands of women no longer hold water (and never did).

So, I ask again. Is it possible that Planned Parenthood wasn't being entirely truthful when it told the Court that partial birth abortion was necessary to protect womens' health? Or have we just witnessed 372 remarkably lucky days?

Would Government Penalties for "Too Many" Children Violate Religious Freedom?

Yesterday, USA Today published a column by Oliver "Buzz" Thomas entitled "Might Our Religion Be Killing Us?" Thomas answers the question with a "yes," arguing that the opposition of some religious groups to abortion and birth control and their encouragement of large families is harmful to the environment.

Thomas asks, "instead of providing tax breaks for having more children, shouldn't Congress be providing incentives for having fewer?"

What if the federal or state government imposed tax penalties upon couples who had, say, more than two children? Would this violate religious freedom?

It is not clear how courts would answer. At the outset, a court would consider whether having more than two children is the sort of "religious exercise" protected by the law. To be sure, having children is different, at some level, from prayer, evangelism, baptism, and communion. At the same time, many couples believe that having many children demonstrates obedience to God; even more believe that abortion and artificial birth control are sinful.

A courts would also ask whether the tax penalty is a legally cognizable "burden" on religious exercise. Assuming the court found that the tax penalty burdened religious exercise, it would then likely consider whether the burden was justified by some "compelling governmental interest." At this point, the government would likely invoke arguments about environmental Armageddon. In response, the couple with three kids would argue that the existence of their third child, by itself, will not bring about the ruination of the planet.

A claim under the Free Exercise Clause might not get very far, as the government would be able to argue that the tax penalty on "excess" children is a "facially neutral, generally applicable" rule that doesn't even implicate the Clause, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Employment Division v. Smith. However, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (for which Buzz Thomas actively lobbied) still applies to the federal government.

In any event, it is worth noting the irony of a liberal suggesting that the government should interfere with "reproductive freedom" by pressuring married couples to use birth control, have abortions, or abstain from sexual relations.

Big Week for Healthcare Rights of Conscience

Last week was a significant one on the healthcare rights of conscience front. A federal court in Washington state issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the enforcement of Washington regulations to force pharmacies and pharmacists to stock and dispense the morning after pill (Plan B). In Stormans v. Selecky, the Court addressed a Washington pharmacy rule that the pharmacy board adopted only after pressure by Planned Parenthood and the governor in response to its previous decision that - comparatively speaking - protected conscience rights. A pharmacy and two individual pharmacists who object to stocking and filling prescriptions for the drug challenged the rule on Free Exercise and Title VII grounds.

The Court held that the Washington rule was not a neutral and generally applicable rule that happened to burden religious persons, but was in fact "targeted at the religious practices of some citizens," and that the "burden [the regulations imposed] on the practices of plaintiffs is intentional not incidental, and substantial not minimal." Indeed, the Court cited "the prominent role played by Planned Parenthood and the Northwest Women's Law Center" as further proff "that Plan B and religious objection were the focus of the rulemaking process." "The regulations appear designed," the Court observed, "to impose a Hobson's choice for the majority of pharmacists who object to Plan B: dispense a drug that ends a life as defined by their religious teachings, or leave their present position in the State of Washington."

Having determined that the rule was targeted at religious objectors, the Court applied strict scrutiny and had no problem concluding that the state had no compelling interest to justify this imposition on objecting pharmacies and pharmacists.

Finally, a Court that understands exactly what is at stake in this fight. Not "access" to the morning after pill (the Court notes that even the state's pharmacy association recognizes that access is not a problematic in Washington state), but the pro-abortion lobby's desire to drive out any vestiges of pro-life sentiment from the medical profession. In the view of those on the radical side of "Choice," dissenting voices cannot be tolerated. Even the few pharmacists who for reasons of conscience and personal religious beliefs do not wish to stock or personally fill prescriptions for a drug that operates in many cases to stop an already fertilized egg from attaching to the womb and developing into a child cannot be permitted to remain in the profession.

The Court had no problem disposing of the argument that the regulations were justified by a concern that pharmacist objections amounted to gender discrimination. Noting that federal and state law both provide a clear right to health care providers not to participate in an abortion, the court held "refusal to participate in an act that one believes terminates a life has nothing to do with gender or gender discrimination." Again, pointing to the apparent lack of a problem of access to Plan B in Washington state, the Court held that "the interests promoted by the regulations have more to do with convenience and heartfelt feelings than with actual access to certain medications."

Exactly. One could hardly hope for better understanding by a court of the true dynamics of this debate than is evidenced in this opinion. Kudos to lead counsel Kristen Waggoner (who were proud to claim as a CLS member), the team at Ellis, Li & McKinstry, and the Alliance Defense Fund for this win.

The importance of the decision is demonstrated by the other big development last week, an Ethics Opinion by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that belittles the role of conscience and repeats many of the misguided arguments for setting aside the role of the conscience of the individual medical professional that the Washington defendants relied upon in Stormans. Relying only a caricaturized view of conscience as simple subjective feelings of distaste for abortion and buying the Planned Parenthood media spin that persons with conscientious objections typically seek to lecture others about their sinfulness, ACOG would effectively rule out conscience rights in the abortion context. More on this ACOG opinion and its serious flaws in the coming days.

Planned Parenthood Fights For Right to Endanger Women

There's an interesting blog post by Leon Wolf over at RedState.com about safety code violations at Planned Parenthood clinics in Missouri and New Jersey and a recent lawsuit filed by the Missouri chapter of Planned Parenthood seeking to be freed of its obligation to comply with the health and safety requirements expected of other walk-in clinics. I'll not repost it all here, but it's worth a read. Remember this when someone tells you that without Roe v. Wade women would be forced to have abortions in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

Were Abortion Advocates Blowing Smoke or Have We Just Had 97 Days of Remarkable Luck?

The Supreme Court issued its decision in Planned Parenthood v. Gonzales (and Carhart v. Gonzales) on April 18, 2007, upholding the constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban and holding that a "health" exception to the statute was not constitutionally required (the law contains a life exception). Abortion advocates argued to the Court that the lack of a health exception in the law would threaten women's health. In the wake of the decision, Planned Parenthood warned that it was "bad news for women's health and safety." A multitude of voices, both among the full-time abortion advocates and those advocates employed as newspaper editorialists warned of the imminent harm women faced as a result of the decision.

As Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out, the number of Partial Birth Abortions performed annually prior to the Court's decision was very much in doubt. But as he notes even the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood's research arm, admits that there were 2200 Partial Birth Abortions in 2000. Accepting this figure, likely a serious understatement, 6 partial birth abortions were performed every day. Ruling out such procedures when necessary to save a woman's life - a circumstance that has never been shown to exist in the real world but nonetheless exempted under the Act - as of today, July 23, 2007, that is 582 partial-birth abortions NOT performed since the Supreme Court's decision came down.

Although the Court noted that its decision would permit an as-applied challenge to the PBA Ban in the case of a woman whose health would actually be threatened were she not allowed to have a partial-birth abortion, and Justice Ginsburg invited such a case in her dissent, no such challenge seems to have been brought. Given that such a woman would presumably need immediate relief from a court - through a temporary restraining order - one would think that if such a circumstance presented itself that the case would almost immediately find its way to court on an emergency basis. At a minimum, one would think that we would have heard well-publicized stories of these women whose health was jeopardized by not being able to have their child delivered alive past the navel (or its head delivered) and THEN killed. It seems that experience is teaching us that the American Medical Association was right when it determined that partial-birth abortion is "not medically indicated."

582 averted partial-birth abortions and NO women harmed. Either an incredible run of luck or perhaps it underscores the biggest victory in the case for life - the unmasking of the abortion lobby's claims that abortion protects women's health.