Truth and The Swift Vets

get over it pal...the God Almighty courts have ruled....the courts put bush in office so they must be right about everything eh?

A federal judge in New York ruled today that a federal law that banned a form of abortion is unconstitutional because it does not include an exception for cases where the procedure might be necessary to protect a woman's health. The law, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, enacted in November, makes it a crime for doctors to perform any "overt act" to "kill the partially delivered living fetus."

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Today's ruling, by Judge Richard Conway Casey of the Federal District Court for the Southern District, came in a case brought by the National Abortion Federation and seven physicians. Judge Casey determined that a decision in 2000 by the Supreme Court required that any law limiting abortion must have a clause allowing doctors to go ahead with the procedure if they determine that the risk to a women's health is greater without it.

"While Congress and the lower courts may disagree with the Supreme Court's constitutional decisions, that does not free them from their constitutional duty to obey the Supreme Court's rulings," Judge Casey wrote. In its 2000 ruling, he said, the Supreme Court "informed us that this gruesome procedure may be outlawed only if there exists a medical consensus that there is no circumstance in which any women would potentially benefit from it."

Circumstances in which the procedure is performed


Intact D&X procedures are extremely rare, carried out in roughly 0.2% (two-tenths of one percent) of all abortions in the USA. They may be performed during the third trimester of pregnancy if:

The fetus is dead.

The fetus is so malformed that it can never gain consciousness and will die shortly after birth.

The fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would place the woman's life in severe danger.

The fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would grievously damage the woman's health and/or disable her.

The fetus is alive, but the woman wishes to end her pregnancy for non-medical/psychological reasons.



Some of the fetuses which fall into this category have developed hydrocephalus. Approximately 1 in 2,000 fetuses develop hydrocephalus while in the womb; this is about 5,000 a year in the United States. The defect is not usually discovered until late in the second trimester of pregnancy. If a fetus develops hydrocephalus, the head may expand to a size of up to 250% of the radius of a normal newborn skull, making it impossible for it to pass through the cervix. In such a case, the physician may elect to perform an intact D&X procedure by draining off the fluid from the brain area, collapsing the fetal skull and withdrawing the dead fetus. However, a caesarian section delivery would allow the safe delivery of a hydrocephalic fetus without significant danger to the mother.


In the 2 to 3 day procedure, the cervix is dilated. The fetus is delivered feet-first. The surgeon inserts a sharp object into the back of the fetus' head, and inserts a vacuum tube through which the brains and its fluids are extracted. The head of the fetus contracts at this point and allows the fetus to be more easily removed from the uterus. The fetus can then be removed with less damage to the woman. The technique was pioneered by Dr. Martin Haskell in 1992.


Intact D&X procedures are not performed during the first trimester, because there are better ways to perform abortions. There is no need to follow such a procedure because the fetus' head is quite small at this stage of gestation and can be quite easily removed from the woman's uterus.