House Votes to Outlaw 'Partial Birth' Abortions
WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday approved a bill that would outlaw a controversial form of abortion, moving the measure a crucial step closer to becoming law and imposing the most significant limits on abortion in three decades.
The bill, which would ban a procedure that critics call "partial birth" abortion, passed 282 to 139. The Senate approved a nearly identical bill in March, 64 to 33.
The two chambers are expected to quickly resolve the sole difference between their versions and send the bill to the White House.
President Bush has pledged to sign the legislation, which would make it the first federal statute criminalizing an established abortion procedure since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. That ruling established a woman's right to have an abortion before the time a fetus can live on its own.
In a statement released by the White House on Wednesday night, Bush praised House passage of what he called "this important legislation
However, abortion-rights advocates promised a quick legal challenge to the measure, including an effort to block it from taking effect while the court battle proceeds. "When the president signs it, we will immediately go to court to have it enjoined in order to safeguard the health of women," said Vicki Saporta, spokeswoman for the National Abortion Federation, one of several groups preparing lawsuits against the legislation.
The measure's constitutionality is in question because the Supreme Court in 2000 struck down a similar law that Nebraska had enacted. The justices ruled against the state law because, they said, it could ban many forms of abortion -- not just one procedure -- and did not provide an exception for cases when a woman's health was at risk.
Proponents say the bill before Congress was drafted to withstand court scrutiny by making it clear that the ban would apply narrowly to the procedure that is generally used during the second trimester of pregnancy. Critics call it "partial birth" abortion because it involves partially removing an intact fetus from the womb before it is destroyed.
In the procedure, the fetus is pulled from the womb into the birth canal feet first. Before the head emerges, scissors are used to penetrate its skull.
Under the bill, doctors would be allowed to perform such a procedure only to save the life of a pregnant woman, but not for other health reasons.
