By LARRY O'DELL
RICHMOND
A full federal appeals court agreed Monday to review a panel decision striking down a Virginia law banning a type of late-term abortion.
The state attorney general's office asked for the rehearing after a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared the ban unconstitutional on May 20. Oral arguments are expected in late October.
The law bans a procedure that abortion opponents call "partial-birth abortion." Judge M. Blane Michael wrote in the panel's majority opinion that the law is unconstitutional "because it imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to obtain an abortion."
An appeals court panel first struck down the statute in 2005. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the court to take another look after upholding a similar federal abortion ban last year.
"We are pleased by today's decision that the full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear this case for the first time," said J. Tucker Martin, a spokesman for Attorney General Bob McDonnell.
Stephanie Toti, the Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer who represented abortion providers in the case, said she was surprised the full appeals court decided to rehear the case "because the legal issues involved are fairly straightforward."
Abortion opponents claim the Virginia law is broader than the federal ban. One key difference between the two laws cited by the appeals panel in its 2-1 ruling: The federal law protects doctors who set out to perform a legal abortion that by accident becomes the banned procedure, while the Virginia statute does not.
"The Virginia law is extreme in its application," Toti said. "It's basically a ban on a common method of second-trimester abortion."
Toti also noted that in June 2007, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared Michigan's law unconstitutional because it could also prohibit other abortion procedures. The Supreme Court in January refused to review the decision.
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The case is Richmond Medical Center v. Herring.
On the Net:
The May 20 panel decision: http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/031821A.P.pdf
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"Short-sighted individuals
"Short-sighted individuals who feel that the right to human life surpasses everything else . . ."
???????
In your own words, friend--I am one of those short-sighted people. Which rights do you suppose are more important than the right to draw a breath without someone trying to kill you?
If it were you at a convenience store with someone aiming a gun at your head, would you consider your right to life to be more important than anything else at that moment? I would. Your life, I mean. Because, though we disagree, I would defend your right to life, along with everyone else's. Cheers, MGM
The poison word
As long as the word "abortion" is used, people will rail against it. It is the word itself that has been deliberately 'demonized' by those short-sighted individuals who feel that the right to human life surpasses that of anything else. If the procedure was called a Family Planning Procedure, which it is, it could be accepted without problem, but no. When we are teenagers we make mistakes by failing to look at the long term consequences of our actions. We may need to grow up and realize that we are not the most important creature in the universe and that our actions today will have consequences later. (Will China be our future?) If only the word "Politics" could be demonized and we begin to take responsibility for the actions of our species, we might be on the road to adulthood. Can you think of some other words that have been "poisoned"?