EDITORIAL
Abortion law lacks crucial exceptions
As politicians use the latest abortion twist as a weather-vane to shore up election support, women whose health is compromised by a second- or third-trimester pregnancy have a big problem.
A law signed Wednesday by President Bush bans late-term abortions and makes no exceptions for pregnant women who face health risks or are carrying fetuses with life-threatening disabilities.
How the Bush administration and Congress can place the health of a fetus above the health of its mother is beyond us. As we've said repeatedly, this decision is between a woman and her doctor. Banning late-term abortions without making any exceptions interferes with a physician's ability to make the best decision for the patient.
Late-term abortion, clinically known as "intact dilation and extraction," is a procedure most women would go to great lengths to avoid. But that's not always possible.
"These are women who can't continue a pregnancy because they have had a stroke, diabetes or renal failure," says Bethany Herrera of a Dallas abortion clinic. "This law is not going to affect that many women, but the few it does affect, it will affect drastically."
Already, abortion providers scared of running afoul of the law have suspended procedures. Meanwhile, one of the largest construction companies in Texas has dropped a project to build an abortion clinic because concrete suppliers who oppose abortion have boycotted the job.
On the positive side, federal judges in Nebraska, New York and California have blocked enforcement of the law on grounds that its lack of any health exception is constitutionally problematic.
Yesterday, a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the government from enforcing the new abortion law at Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide, calling the law "an undue burden on a woman's right to choose."
This law could have passed with minimum controversy had it included an exception for abortion seekers whose health is endangered or whose fetuses suffer from life-threatening disabilities.
But no, it had to be all or nothing. And that speaks volumes about Washington's attitude toward women's health.
