Less than an hour after President Bush signed a bill banning safe abortion procedures into law, a federal judge in Nebraska issued a temporary injunction to prevent implementation of the law. However, US District Judge Richard Kopf limited his order to the four Nebraska doctors who had filed suit against the law, according to the New York Times. Federal judges in San Francisco and New York are also considering suits against the new law.
Kopf found the law unconstitutional because it lacked an exception to preserve the woman’s health. The US Supreme Court found a similar state law in Nebraska unconstitutional for the same reason in 2000, in Stenberg v. Carhart.
Bush signed the bill in a ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC yesterday. Over 100 pro-choice activists, led by the National Organization for Women (NOW), rallied outside the building to protest the so-called “partial-birth” abortion ban. Kim Gandy, NOW president, called the new law “a dangerous piece of legislation that ultimately seeks to outlaw even the safest abortion procedures. The truth is that the term ‘partial-birth abortion’ doesn’t exist in the medical world – it’s a fabrication of the anti-choice machine.”
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